Mark Clipsham has come up with some new plans for affordable grain bin houses. According to Mark, the basic construction of these homes is fast and DIY friendly. There is no concrete foundation wall – the home’s wall construction is the same from the footing to the roof. They are monolithic/continuous, field-formed, self-supporting SIPs (no … Read more
Below is an excerpt from Home Work: Hand Built Shelter (Shelter Publications, 2004) by Lloyd Kahn. This book features more than 1,500 photos that illustrate various innovative architectural styles and natural building materials such as cob, papercrete, bamboo, adobe, strawbale, timber framing and earthbags. If you love fine, fun or funky buildings, you will enjoy … Read more
The Izadkhast fortress, a Sassanid era (224–651) fortification in southern province of Fars, Iran, will undergo some rehabilitation work soon. A budget of about $50,000 has been allocated to the project, which includes reinforcement of the foundation and exterior walls and covering parts of the fortress with cob material. This fortress was built on the … Read more
In this pilot episode of Tiny Homes Of The Ancient World series, we travel 2000 years back in time to the Celtic iron-age fort and roundhouses of Castell Henllys in Pembrokeshire, Wales. These large roundhouses have been recently reconstructed based on archeological evidence. In this video we learn how they were constructed and imagine the … Read more
Paul Harnish can still remember the 50-foot whale backbone used as the handrail for two flights of steps leading up to “Bonavista Lodge,” a beach-stone cottage tucked into the woods. It belonged to his grandfather, who operated a fish plant in Hubbards Cove, Canada. Paul says the getaway was named for its stunning panoramic view … Read more
Under the guidance of the German master-builder Jörg Stamm, folks at Bamboo U, a build and design course in Bali, have created a bamboo yurt which can fold like an umbrella and be deployed in an instant. The yurt’s frame is made from bamboo of the Phyllostachys species, referred to in Bali as Bambu Jajang. … Read more