In 1978 the Howards were urban professionals. Wanting a simpler, more meaningful life on a smaller budget, the family-of-4 lived on $18K/year, reducing costs to $10K/year after moving to their “intentional” Colorado homestead. They moved into an abandoned double-wide trailer on their 35 acre property and began raising chickens and goats for milk, as well … Read more
Students from the University at Buffalo, New York, have embarked on the construction of three tiny homes to help combat homelessness. This initiative forms part of a design-build program within the school called the Small Built Works Project. The students are designing prototypes for tiny houses, which are then developed into permit-ready construction documents for … Read more
The 2015 quake that saw the collapse of predominantly brick, mud, and mortar buildings in Nepal, fed the public perception that concrete structures are more durable. But civil engineers and architects say technologies like rammed earth would be environmentally more sustainable and earthquake-resilient. Nepal’s domestic cement production more than tripled from 3 million tons to … Read more
Whimsical details abound inside and out at this one-of-a-kind home on Sturgeon Creek in Elliot Maine. Inside, you’ll find over 4400 square feet of living space that will surprise and delight you at every turn. There are options for bedrooms, great rooms, home office, art studio, music room, exercise room, root cellar, sauna, 4-season sunroom/potting … Read more
This 3,000-square-foot home in Vadodara, India, with three bedrooms and a pool, was built for a couple with two sons. They wanted an eco-friendly, well-ventilated home with plenty of natural light and an aesthetic blending with nature. “The layout is a simple one, divided in two blocks — one with all the living areas and … Read more
In her book Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, Julia Watson proposes to revalue the techniques of construction, production, cultivation and extraction carried out by diverse remote populations who, generation after generation, have managed to keep alive ancestral cultural practices integrated with nature, with a low environmental cost and simple execution. While modern societies try to … Read more