Rolling blackouts in California and utility outages in flood-ravaged regions have focused renewed attention on resilient architecture, designing homes that bounce back from major storms and operate independently. Could you still live in your house if the power went out and gas wasn’t available? It’s an increasingly vital issue to contemplate, one addressed in my […]
Grim Lessons from Tornado Alley
I detoured from a business trip this fall to travel through parts of Tornado Alley, which extends from North Texas through South Dakota. Big twisters seem to touch down there with alarming frequency, causing major building damage and heart-wrenching loss of life. I wanted to see how homeowners and builders there have responded; how they […]
How Windows Perform in Hurricanes
The United States gets hit by roughly the same number of hurricanes each year. But they are growing in intensity, thanks to higher level of moisture in the lower atmosphere. In 2017, two Category 4 hurricanes struck U.S. shores. The next year, Michael made landfall along the Gulf of Mexico with Category 5 force with […]
Designing for Disaster: Available Today
My new book, Designing for Disaster, is available for sale on Amazon.com and at your favorite local bookstore. Publication of the book marks the end of a three-year journey into the fledgling practice of resilient architecture. If you are building a new home today, you’ve got a 50 percent chance that it will be the […]
Serenbe Kicks Off Tour of Southern Agrihoods
Agriculture is thoroughly woven into this new-age community outside Atlanta
Brad Pitt’s New Orleans Experiment Becomes a Real Neighborhood
Brad Pitt’s noble experiment in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans looks like a real neighborhood now, though the home designs barely hang together on the block