OUR MISSION
Our mission is to design and build the most comfortable, healthy, and environmentally responsible buildings on the planet. We achieve this by designing and constructing homes that are in complete harmony with nature. We work with passive solar design and active technologies to harness the solar, wind, and biological cycles to provide a complete life support system for our clients through integrated biomimicry design.
Our homes and buildings are grid-independent so that your family will be safe and secure despite outside conditions. By working with nature instead of fighting against it, we can provide all basic life support functions of the home yet remain entirely self-sufficient and independent in energy, water, waste, and even food production. We design custom homes that not only excel in function for you in your daily life but reflects your personal taste and values.
WHAT TO EXPECT
We have a strong client-focused approach to the design of your home, meeting with our clients early in the process and listening carefully to their wants and needs. After an initial appointment to discuss your project in an overview, we present our design concepts and, once considered and discussed at length, work to evolve the design – as a complete package of structure, mechanics, and interiors – to perfectly suit your taste. We believe in investing time in you and your project from the very start and apply that same attention through design explorations, contract finalizations, permitting and project management, and construction and completion.
HEALTHY BUILDINGS
There is copious information relating the design, mechanics, and maintenance of a building to the health and happiness of its occupants. Research shows that visual connections to the outside decrease cortisol (stress) levels and illness recovery times, whereas, by contrast, “unhealthy” buildings are responsible for SBS (Sick Building Syndrome).
SCOPES OF WORK
Our passion to simultaneously better humanity and nature drives every project we pursue. Our specialty is the design and new construction of single-family homes, the “why” has led us to take part in a multitude of project types that include renovations, “small houses,” lite commercial ventures, educational facilities, green innovations for developing countries, and sustainable urban communities across the globe. Research shows that visual connections to the outside decrease cortisol (stress) levels and illness recovery times, whereas, by contrast, “unhealthy” buildings are responsible for SBS (Sick Building Syndrome).
STEWARDS TO THE ENVIRONMENT
We feel responsible for the impact building and construction has on the environment. We are constantly thinking ahead and looking forward with our technologies, innovation, and design processes – but, to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, what good is a fine house if you don’t have a decent planet to put it on? We want to protect our environment as much as we protect our clients and not to destroy or “build-up” with construction, but to restore energies and resources and incorporate our structures into the natural site. We feel our responsibility is universal to our clients as well as the planet.
TECHNOLOGY
It starts with the philosophy of doing no harm to our clients, which we do by building you a healthy home. Starting with low- to zero-VOC materials, all the way through to clean water, air, and insulation processes, our priority is to build our clients’ homes they will mentally, physically, and physiologically feel good about. The technical processes we employ include (but are not limited to) solar power, battery back-up, energy recovery ventilation, geothermal heating and cooling, wind, passive solar, rainwater collection, off-grid solar, and superior insulation.
SECURITY
When a storm blows through and the power shuts down across your neighbourhood, imagine your life being uninterrupted: your house remains cool in the summer and warm in the winter; your refrigerator, freezer, and the food to nourish your family are unaffected and unspoiled; your lights stay on and your children are unafraid. If your street is blacked out in the middle of the sweltering summer heat or below-freezing winter, with environmental design, there is no need to relocate your family to a motel or a friend’s house across town.
ECONOMIC BENEFIT
Every day, the cost benefits and long-term savings of building healthy, sustainable homes grow greater and greater. It is a myth that sustainable buildings cost more than “regular” buildings: a custom home that is sustainable and healthy is comparable in cost to a custom home that abides by only the outdated, non-sustainable standards (which, by comparison, are drastically less efficient, un-resourceful, open loop, and dependent on grid connectivity). The primary difference is the distribution of costs: there are many ways to quantify value, but most people consider cash flow and their return on investments to be the best gauge. With sustainable designing, the hundreds of dollars you can save in monthly utility bills – and thousands available in tax refunds – typically offsets higher first costs of designing to better and sustainable systems