Seventeen years ago Dave Fennell found a house in Co Meath that represented three different centuries in Irish building. It comprised a traditional period country cottage with fresh thatch on top and a more modern 20th-century wing alongside. Careful restoration work revealed that the oldest part of the house was actually made of cob. The … Read more
I remember that when I attended the Natural Building Colloquium in Kingston, NM in the fall of 2015 there was a fellow named Matt Anderson going around filming and interviewing people. He was part of Earth Lodge Studio, and the result of all this filming was a documentary entitled “What’s a Colloquium?: An Oral History … Read more
French cooperative Anatomies D’Architecture completed this restoration of a traditional brick house in Normandy. The project was defined by ambitious construction goals: 0% concrete, 0% plastic, and 100% natural materials sourced on-site within less than 100 km radius. The architects brought their vision to life by collaborating with farmers, loggers, sawmills, quarrymen, masons, historians, researchers, apprentices, … Read more
Atelier Daniel Florez was invited to complete a new beach pavilion as a cluster of three, giant pergolas made of laminated wood and bamboo at Hotel Kilombo Villas in Tibau do Sul, Brazil. The pergolas provide plenty of shaded and ventilated space below the polycarbonate roof by projecting the shadow of a leaf that moves … Read more
A small stone building in Switzerland that had been a wood shed and rabbit hutch was transformed into a compact two-level house by architect Enrico Sassi. His design involved repairing the damaged stone walls, adding a new roof, installing an extra window and integrating space-efficient furnishings. “The building was in a poor condition,” Sassi said. … Read more
Jerome Osentowski, the founder of the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute is known the world over as a gardening guru. But now he is facing a challenge from a pest he never anticipated: zoning. Around Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, the legend is well-known: An eccentric old man living on Basalt Mountain had grown bananas at … Read more