Architect and designer Jenna Yu’s home in Providence, Rhode Island features wooden siding on an addition connected to the original 19th-century home. The addition was built with panelized straw. The walls were plastered by her family and friends with earthen plaster, and the light fixtures were handcrafted by her mother and step-father. With two young … Read more
When Riyadh-based Syn Architects organized workshops on rammed earth construction recently, it was amazed by the level of interest. Hanno Burtscher of Earthman led the workshops; Syn had worked with him on its recent Desert X rammed earth installation in AlUla. He also oversaw the rammed earth construction on a visitor pavilion in Riyadh. 2000m² … Read more
Larissa Touloupas and her husband Ondrej Pekarovic live near Kalamazoo, Michigan where they built a straw bale house, powered by the sun. They are homesteading with fruit trees, vegetable beds, bee hives, goats, and chickens, and call the place Solfed Farms They have two kids, five and six, who they take to a babysitter’s occasionally. … Read more
The Club House in Valle San Nicolàs in Mexico is a perfectly round building that reveals the landscape all around. It is constructed of wood and other natural materials, blending into the surrounding environment. Its circular floor plan is on an artificial lake, created for water-skiing and fed by rainwater and water flowing from the … Read more
36-year-old Anders Boisen used to live in apartments all over the city of Aarhus in Denmark. “I had this claustrophobic feeling about living in an apartment, not so much because of the size of it but more because of the lifestyle that seems so predefined,” he says. “If I could build a house that is … Read more
Sim Van der Ryn, a Dutch-born architect sometimes called “the father of green architecture,” died. He was 89. Mr. Van der Ryn taught architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1961 to 1995, a span interrupted by a four-year stint in the 1970s as Gov. Jerry Brown’s state architect. Early on Sim was swept … Read more