First, turn off the intrusive sound track.

By Chiara Fiorillo News Reporter
16 Sep 2023

A hermit may have lived in a precarious house perched on the side of a cliff in California for the past 10 years — but nobody seems to know who the man actually is.

A dilapidated three-storey structure, made of driftwood, was first spotted at Devil’s Slide in the San Francisco Bay Area in December 2022, when it was filmed by a drone. Stunned onlookers said the intriguing home was partially destroyed during the rainstorms that hit the Bay Area earlier this year but has since been rebuilt.

Drone operator @ParallaxEffect, who posted footage of the driftwood shack on YouTube, said he was hiking along the California coast with some friends when they noticed the property, which he described as “one of the most incredible human structures I’ve ever seen”.

The shack appears to have several rooms and is located on the steep San Mateo County rock face. The video shows wood and ropes in the structure as well as a boxing punching bag, several buoys, some old signs, and what appears to be a fully enclosed room.

On Google Earth, the shack appears to have a rope rising from it, which is linked to the Devil’s Slide trail above — and it may possibly be used as a means of entry and exit. A Google Maps satellite image also seems to show the structure intact as waves crash onto the rocks beneath it.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/mystery-hermit-living-cliffside-shack-30955761

If you look at the left, there appears to be a cave or tunnel. When blown up, there appears to be a pathway of rocks leading into it.???

In my years of photographing driftwood shacks for the book: Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast, I never saw anything faintly resembling this.

Wow!!

Thanks to Jeff Sinder and Ruth Kneass

Photo by Nin Solis – Living Inside
Article by Anna Bisazza

Deep in the Mexican countryside of Valle de Bravo — a lush escape about two hours’ drive from Mexico City — Emiliano Garcia and Helene Carlo found the perfect spot to build an eco home. Partners in life and in ASPJ, a Mexican architecture and landscape design studio, the couple had a burning question: can we build more sustainably and cheaper, and in a way that can be widely copied?

The main structural element is a concrete cube that supports the rest of the house.

“It was important for us to prove its feasibility and to be able to make our structure replicable, not only a one-of-a-kind,” says Garcia. The couple are keen for this type of building to become the rule rather than the exception.

La Lomita is named for its hilltop position, from where it looks out on to the picturesque surrounding mountains from its secluded spot, and is accessed by a small dirt road. The structure is distinguished by an unusual single arched roof and an open facade with corrugated metal finishing that loosely evokes the image of an aircraft hangar, but there are many other experimental features meticulously planned by Garcia and Carlo that are not immediately obvious.

“Being able to take weight off the building, bringing it to half of what it would normally be in a conventional build, was a really successful outcome,” says Garcia. The main structural element is a concrete cube that encloses two bathrooms and the staircase. It supports the rest of the house, which is built primarily in wood. “This means we’re not intervening heavily in the foundation by digging deep into the ground and building concrete slab layers. Here, we managed to separate the house from the ground, only attaching it to the necessary structural points.”

A second critical aspect for Garcia and Carlo was the traceability of materials and controlling as much as possible their impact on the environment. To build the columns, floors and walls — which amounts to 70% of the house — they used recycled laminated wood made from boxes for the transport of car parts in Volkswagen and Audi factories. “This is FSC-certified wood from Europe and we’re giving it a second use as OSB [oriented strand board], a material that is gaining popularity these days.”

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/25/ready-to-soar-inside-a-dramatic-eco-home-in-mexico

Last Saturday, Lukas, his fpur-year-old daughter Luna, and I walked over to the Berlin Templehof airport, which closed 14 years ago. The landing strip is intact and used by rollerbladers, skateboarders, cyclists, and runners. Lukas does a voiceover with the video here.

The Nazis did an enormous construction in the mid-1930s. The main building was once one of the largest buildings in the world.

On the perimeter are a series of gardens, shown here. Things look a bit bedraggled, since the growing season is over, but what a great idea: people growing their own vegetables in the middle of the city.

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Hello,

I’m writing because we have just recently completed a straw bale ADU in our backyard in Boise, Idaho that all came about because of (1) a pregnancy and (2) seeing Lloyd Kahn speak at Bookshop Santa Cruz promoting Small Homes: The Right Size years ago. I wanted to share our story.

My husband and I had moved from Santa Cruz to the Santa Cruz Mountains (Boulder Creek right outside of Big Basin). We had the big dream of starting from scratch on an off-grid property and building a structure over time utilizing natural building principles. We had taken a straw bale building workshop at Real Goods/Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA and fell in love with straw bale building. That first winter was tough. It rained so much that we barely had the ability to get that infrastructure going. There were trees falling and mudslides. Leaky roofs and mice. No power, no running water.

Then we found out we were pregnant and needed to rethink whether we would realistically be able to both work full-time in Santa Cruz, commute 45 minutes each way, and build a home while taking care of a small child. Land, permits, building materials, daycare, etc. all added up financially so to live in that area we would both have to work full-time jobs. How could we do that and build a home? It was daunting.
Read More …

From our pal and kindred spirit Deek:

Check out some of Deek’s other ventures and adventures here: www.lloydkahn.com/?s=deek