As one of the top natural builders who influenced the direction of my life, we’ll be discussing more of Ken Kern’s building ideas. This is the stuff that fueled my imagination and passion for affordable housing when I was a young man. It was obvious to me 35-40 years ago that modern building materials are not affordable to the average person and so I’ve been intent on finding lower cost alternatives ever since.
“This is one of the finest books on low-cost owner-built homes that I have read. Mr. Kern specifies the general principles of low-energy consumption and low-cost living with an artistic expression of living spaces. In particular, he specifies ways to build your home to evolve with your life and ability to invest more in your home with passing time. His philosophy is to avoid going into deep debt, by constructing only the necessities to begin with, then enlarge the structure in a planned and integrated way. He has many original ideas and he was also an experimentalist. He researched his low-cost philosophy around the world to find new solutions to many construction problems. He plans and constructs his homes with natural heating and air conditioning integrated into the structure. Ken Kern was a heroic architectural pioneer in the field of low-cost owner-built housing.” – Google Books
Maybe you also should refer to this one:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Earth-Sheltered-Owner-Built-Home/dp/0910225001/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1331649260&sr=8-8
Ken Kern: The Earth Sheltered Owner-Built Home
That looks cool, apparently they also have one called “The owner built homestead”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684149265/sr=8-1/qid=1330318040/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1330318040&sr=8-1&seller=
I’ll pick one up to add to my awesome retro books collection :)