16 Essential Steps to Straw Bale Success

If you go to strawbale.com you can download a free subscription to “16 Essential Steps to Straw Bale Success” e-course.  For over two weeks you’ll receive a daily and information-packed lesson about straw bale construction in your inbox. Over 50,000 people have read it so far! Everything from  Design, Choosing Best Bales, Creating Custom Bales, Creating Niches, Prep … Read more

Building an Earthbag Round House eBook

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

The Build-a-thon and Symposium at City of the Sun

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

The Earth Building Academy in New Zealand

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

Using Augmented Reality with Bamboo Architecture

Bamboo architecture stands out due to its complex geometries and heavy reliance on craftsmanship. Physical models have traditionally been central to materializing architects’ visions and conveying intricate design. Now, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift: the digital revolution is bringing computer-aided design tools to the forefront, unlocking bamboo’s potential in ways never … Read more