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By Bruce King/Build Well: Concrete building and earthen building are the same thing: making larger rocks out of smaller rocks. The differences are simply construction technique and binder.
Now, like two galaxies slowly merging, the ten thousand year old technologies of earthen construction are evolving, improving, and joining with the two hundred year old concrete industry, itself rapidly evolving and adapting to the very new conditions of a new century.
Dutch-Australian designer and sustainability advocate Joost Bakker is designing an all-natural home in New South Wales for Hollywood actor Zac Efron. The project, he says, reflects a conviction he has held since adolescence: that the built environment must use only materials that can be “fully recycled or returned to the earth.”
Natural building practices and salvaged/recovered wood are a natural fit. Some natural builders say recovered wood outperforms big-box lumber and doesn’t drive up total project costs.
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