Shelter, Energy & Eco-Design

A road map for product design professionals and students to ten Big Ideas in material innovation

For Fuller, nature is the most exquisite technology we know; and what underlies all of his work is the quest to uncover natures fundamental principlesin order to foster their manifestation as a pattern integrity 'for successfully regenerating all life aboard our planetary spaceship.'" Jaime Lawrence Snyder,

The devil is in the details—the science and art of designing and building durable, efficient, straw bale buildings

Composting at scales large enough to capture and recycle the organic wastes of a given community, whether a school, neighborhood, or even a small city, is coming of age, propelled by a growing awareness not only of our food waste crisis, but also the need to restore natural fertility in our soils.

Everything you need to know to build with rammed earth in warm and cold climates.



Rammed earth sand, gravel, and clay or lime/cement binder packed into
forms is a low-energy, high-performance building method, yielding
beautiful, sustainable results. Its thermally stable and can be