The wildly successful Swedish company, Ikea, is seeking to move ecologically optimized tiny houses to the mainstream. These tiny houses, or trailers around 200 square feet, bear the company’s trademark airy and minimalist style and retail for around $50,000.With Ikea’s emphasis on recycled and reusable materials, the company seems likely to accelerate some important shifts … Read more
I received an email from Susan Johnson titled “Owen my friend” and she has given me permission to post it here: I met Owen so long ago. In the early 70’s, Owen built his first house. He began coming to Colorado from Nebraska to spend the summers. He was hanging out in Breckenridge back when … Read more
This lovely building complex in Mekarwangi village, Indonesia, is a workshop and residence designed by RAW architecture. It was created with local craftsmen and materials (mostly bamboo) to create three organic-shaped buildings that fit into the landscape. They used recycled plastic, sympodial bamboo, and local stone for the foundations. The artisan workshop is a raised … Read more
The Saga of Macramé Park is a film made by Ben Van Meter in the early 1970’s in Bolinas, California. It shows how a wonderful and artful playground was built by my older sister, Alexandra Jacopetti Hart, with lots of help from friends and apprentices. They collected driftwood logs on the nearby beach and used … Read more
This video tours a farm with fruit and nut trees. The hosts forage as they go, and then cook a pavlova and make tea, entirely from foraged ingredients. They chat about how grateful they are to be nurtured by the trees planted and the actions taken by their parents and grandparents. 60 years ago their … Read more
An innovative sustainable building material project by a team of civil engineering students from Tamil Nadu has won an award at a competition organized by the Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute. They won the ‘Student Innovators’ award for developing the ‘Replast Pavers and Building Blocks’ project. Through this project, the team solved the problem of … Read more