Pedro Pedrosa and his wife Sofia left city life over a decade ago to live in a mostly-abandoned farming village in Central Portugal. After creating their home from several small outbuildings, they continued to experiment with local building materials- cork, pine, lime, and slate- by transforming three stone storage sheds into “Nature Houses.” Their town, … Read more
Some birds’ nests are cup-shaped, some have domes, others have been likened to apartment complexes. How do birds build their nurseries? Captain Cook collected a hummingbird nest during his trip to Brazil. That nest, just 6 cm (2.4 inches) high was in the fork of two branches, camouflaged with lichen, lined with fluffy seeds and … Read more
Separo House, located in the village of Separo, Iran was designed by Hypertext Architecture Studio. It features vaulted roofs that reflect regional architecture while providing essential shading and thermal comfort in the hot, arid climate. It is constructed primarily from adobe so its color echoes the nearby mountains. Its double-shell structure enhances indoor thermal comfort, … Read more
A cellar with a paved floor beneath a home is an almost unheard of feature for the Neolithic period. Members of the Funnel Beaker Culture (around 4000 BCE) created the cellar on the island of Falster in southeast Denmark, where workers stumbled on the remains of ancient homes while extending a railway in the area. … Read more
Peter Wade-Martins has visited all 649 of Norfolk’s surviving medieval churches to study the stone types used in their construction. As a result, he has identified the use of conglomerate, grey quartzite, millstone grit, and tile, much of it reused from ruinous Roman buildings. There were few stone churches in that region of England until … Read more
The founder of 3 Moons Earthbag Community in Nevada, Jeanne Rucquoi, is now 92 years old and ready to hand it over to the next generation. The key is to find someone who believes in the dream. The 3 Moons project is a magical place an hour from Las Vegas in the desert. It includes … Read more