Practice Architecture’s house is built from the plant growing in the fields around it.
…
Flat House, as the home on Margent Farm is called, is the conversion of a steel-framed agricultural shed, within which a new structure has been made of prefabricated timber-framed cassettes that were filled with a mulch of hemp, lime and water known as hempcrete. Once the mulch was dry they were erected into thick, highly insulating walls that also hold the building up. The exterior is covered in corrugated panels, which at first glance looks like the cement cladding typical of farm sheds. It is actually made of fibres from the outer coating of hemp stalks combined with resin taken from agricultural waste. It has a livelier texture and a more translucent quality than cement.

theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/07/flat-house-margent-farm-cambridgeshire-hemp-practice-architecture-carbon-energy

From Maui Surfer

Kevin Kelly sent me this link. She has 8 million American followers. Wow!

About her: youtube.com/watch?v=J9CfVcXoYh4

Making bamboo furniture: youtube.com/watch?v=LTejJnrzGPM

I discovered a homemade book called Stretching in 1979. It was aimed at athletes, with stretching routines for some 20 sports.

I wrote the author, Bob Anderson, and suggested he add stretches for builders, waitresses, truck drivers, kids, and older people. We started talking. I found out that he and his wife Jean (who did the drawings) had sold 35,000 copies from a garage in Southern California. End result: Bob and Jean rented a house on the beach here in Spring, 1980, and in three months, we did a complete revision of the book.

We did a first run of 50,000 copies, and the book took off, with Random House as distributor, and has been selling ever since; it’s now sold over 3¾ million copies worldwide, and is in 23 languages. As far as I can tell, it’s the best-selling fitness book in the world.

Tech Neck  An important (and timely) addition to this new edition will be stretches to combat the bad posture caused by (1) cell phone usage and (2) working on computers.

Take a look at how bent-over people are when talking on their phones. It’s called “tech neck.”

The point is, we all spend too much time at screens of various sizes, and it’s not healthy. Not good for the body.

Seeking Editorial Advice: What should we call this section? Stretches (or Stretching) for the Digital World? Technological Era? Digital Era? Tech World? Information Age? Computer Age? Technological Age? Digital Age?

How do we describe our world which is now filled with hours spent on screens?

Want to stretch right now? shltr.net/stretch

New Fiskars (same outfit that makes the orange-handled scissors) splitting axe that I learned about on CoolTools (kk.org). Works so well it makes splitting fun. As opposed to clunky splitting malls I’ve used up until now.

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Just ran across this photo from a blog post in 2013. It was sent us by Island Woman MJ. She wrote the photographer (whose name we didn’t get), who replied (Google Translate wasn’t that good 6 years ago):

Hello

Thank you like my photos

This little house in a green park

The park is located in Yilan, Taiwan

Taiwan is a rainy island

After the rain from upstream many Driftwood

There are several college students using driftwood and some abandoned building materials to build a small house

This cute little house is now the Green Park show

Taiwan is a mountainous and river country inhabited by friendly people

I hope you have the opportunity to travel to this country