At fifty-one, Hal Hinkle was winding down a successful career on Wall Street and he was trying to figure out how to spend his retirement. He owned some property in Oregon, and launching an initiative to reforest the area seemed like a great way to reduce America’s carbon footprint. He recruited volunteers and sponsors for … Read more
From the earliest times the only way for humans to build shelter was to use locally available raw materials. Rammed earth is estimated to have been used since around 5,000 B.C., often enclosing a wooden framework with a mixture of raw earth combined with plant fiber. Thin wooden sticks can be driven into the ground … Read more
I just finished reading Building an Earthbag Round House by Morgan Caraway of the Sustainable Life School. This PDF ebook describes Morgan’s experience of building his first attempt at earthbag construction some 15 years ago. As he says, there are many ways he would do things differently these days, but he basically got most of … Read more
My friend B Sitkin recently uploaded this video he and his wife made many years ago at City of the Sun in Southern New Mexico. It documents many of the key events at the Build-a-thon and Symposium and features a number of my friends and fellow builders from that time. This event followed on the … Read more
Verena Maeder is an earth building artisan with 32 years experience constructing earth buildings. She first fell in love with natural building as a teenager, but because of the lack of formal training opportunities in this field she decided to pursue an education in architecture as well as building biology and ecology. In 2002 she … Read more
Colorado Earth was founded by engineer and architectural designer Lisa Morey. After moving to New Zealand in 1999 to study architecture, Lisa was inspired to begin creating homes out of mud bricks. She met and began working with a local architect who was building homes this way. During her time in New Zealand she co-authored … Read more