Permaculture Technology Jamboree

This event has multiple purposes: collaboration, experimentation and innovation to move permaculture technology forward experiences for people new to permaculture technology building homesteading skills The Jamboree Format: Attendees can wander among all FIFTEEN of the tracks and participate or observe as much or as little as they like. The instructors will see a project to … Read more

3D Printing With Clay, Aggregate and Straw

Terran’s 3D printing system emulates traditional adobe hand-building techniques to produce walls that are soundproof and fireproof. Using reinforcement learning, they are training custom-designed unmanned aerial drones to emulate traditional earthen building techniques. By leveraging the world’s most abundant building materials—clay, aggregate, and straw—Terran walls save 50% on construction costs versus conventional stick-built walls. Terran’s … Read more

Building with Wood-Joinery

This video is a journey following the sustainable harvesting and milling of trees, the forging of timber-frame chisels and the cutting of the joinery to build a timber-frame. This structure will soon be filled with earthen walls of adobe bricks, cob and wattle & daub. See www.caneloproject.com. You can watch the video at www.youtube.com

Designing Highly-Sustainable Buildings

Earlier this month I participated in a webinar titled Designing Highly-Sustainable Buildings featuring the Sketchup software team, along with Sefaira, a plugin that calculates various aspects of energy use pertaining to the design. A representative from an architectural firm that uses the software explained how they go about their designing, which is mostly for commercial … Read more

Earth Building Online Academy

I just found out about the Earth Building Academy and their online courses. They have been teaching for 20 years and recently ran a free online pizza oven course and had confirmation that online courses really work. They currently are offering a 3 month series of online classes that starts on Monday, January 18th and … Read more

Are Green Building Rating Systems Really Sustainable?

Professor Janis Birkeland is an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne who has taught sustainable planning and architecture at several universities. Previously, she worked as a planner, architect, and lawyer in San Francisco to gain insights into the impediments to sustainability. The following are her thoughts about green buildings  and the rating systems that … Read more