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Homes, homesteads, greenhouses, shared land and off-grid systems. Land, rules, money and the build, in one project. How Studio works →
The office under the meadow
Malcolm Wells buried his own architecture office beside the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and spent the rest of his career arguing that a building should leave the land no worse than it found it.
Read the house study →An open-ended exploration of how we live.
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All stories →Lammas: permission to live on the land
Lammas Ecovillage in Pembrokeshire won planning permission in 2009 after two refusals. Why land and planning are often the real barrier.
Forty feet of rammed earth
The Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg, SC, has rammed-earth walls about 40 feet tall. A material note on pisé and how it ages.
The sun house that ran out of salt
The Dover Sun House stored the sun's heat in Glauber's salt. It worked, then it didn't. A 1948 experiment and what it still teaches.
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The Library, so far
Open the Library →Every story adds records to the Library: the dwelling, its methods and materials, the people and the place. So far that is 24 records across 8 places. You can search all of it and see it on a 2D or 3D map.
Explore the map →Is it legal? Natural building and the code
What a model-code appendix for cob or straw bale actually means, why your town may not have adopted it, and when you will need an engineer's stamp.
Read the guide →Field dispatch
Every other Sunday: the new Library entries, one longer read, and any corrections we made.
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Built something unusual, or know a building that belongs in the Library? Send it with your sources and photos. An editor replies to every submission, and nothing is published without your permission.