"What is the point of having a nice house, if you don't have a decent planet to put it on?"
Henry David Thoreau wondered that 150 years ago, and we wonder even more today.
Buildings account for one fourth of the world's wood harvest, two fifths of its material and energy usage, and one sixth of its fresh water usage. These demands rise as population growth compels us to multiply the total number of buildings on the planet over the next generation. We clearly must find a way to provide safe and decent shelter for all without ravishing the global ecosystem.
That’s what we do.
EBNet promotes, fosters and catalyzes the transformation of building to favor intelligent design, clean energy, and healthy materials.
In the affluent nations, buildings voraciously and unnecessarily waste energy and physical resources, while causing both environmental degradation and health hazards to their occupants. EBNet finds and disseminates ways to conserve scarce resources, to make intelligent use of abundant waste materials, and to thereby slow the destruction of the natural systems upon which we depend.
In the poorer nations, where much of the world's population lives in unsafe, unsanitary structures, labor is plentiful but modern materials such as lumber, cement, and steel are rare and expensive. EBNet points out ways to use affordable and catalytic touches of modern technology that make indigenous building systems safer, healthier, and more durable. Doing more with less is the key to working with, and not against, the natural world that supports us.
EBNet brings useful knowledge to the people worldwide who design and construct buildings.
Center photo above (curving adobe wall) courtesy of Bill Steen/The Canelo Project
EBNet has been selected by the Haitian Government's "Building Back Better Communities in Haiti" to build a prototype home based on EBNet's ASTM Earthen Building Standards.
