📍 Nantes, France | 2–6 Feb 2027 The quality of our conversations will help determine the quality of our solutions. More to come. #isbc2027

Our biggest issue yet (over 120 pages!) is available now! 🔥 🏠️ 🧱 Issue 77 looks to fire as a cause for concern, hope, and provocation; gathering voices that expand our understanding of how to shape buildings, energy, and daily life when the earth is the hottest it has ever been.

if a position of authority can be misused in this way, that position of authority should not exist. It's clearly not enough to simply change who is in that position, no more than praying that the next king be better than the last.

I wrote about 3 of my favorite low-tech design innovations from Iran open.substack.com/pub/thelastf...

The low-tech brilliance of Iranian design

3 resilient technologies demonstrating the remarkable innovation of Iranian engineering

open.substack.com

just doing our duty👇

Dominik Lenné@d-le-nen.bsky.social · 6mo ago

reskeet burchert for gods sake heat insulating construction with biological material is the most logical thing to do

From The Last Straw Monthly Round-up: Extreme weather might be one of the most visible signs of climate change, but crossing planetary thresholds takes many forms. This month we take a look at how to help Typhoon Halong survivors in Alaska, a cob building comeback?, wildfire prevention, and more...

Open Call: Get your building featured in the next issue of The Last Straw magazine! If your building is selected, it’ll be featured in the next magazine and you’ll receive a free copy of the issue! Email all submissions to editors@thelaststraw.org by October 31st!

There is no "miracle" technology! We need to relearn and update the sufficient lifeways that predate cheap fossil fuels.

Michael Burchert@michaelburchert.bsky.social · 12mo ago

So Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) cannot deliver what is promised. What does this mean for costs of conventional building materials with "hard to abate" emissions? pic: possible pathways of price development in D, including (fantasy?) CCS from 2030 onwards. www.agora-industrie.de/publikatione...

This month's TLS Talks is an online panel discussion between six young professionals making their own way in architecture, construction, and education with natural materials. Register for free (donations encouraged) here: www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-wor...

The real "there is no alternative"

Michael Burchert@michaelburchert.bsky.social · last yr.

For more than 10 years, I have been showing you better construction methods, building materials, and better ways of working. For just as long, you have been rejecting them, claiming that they are more expensive. Problem: There is no alternative to sustainable construction. 1/3

Authoritarian neoliberalism: make more people houseless, poor, surveilled, and automated out of a job, and then throw them in a hole.

Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · last yr.

This is all lies, and I don’t know what else I can add: Human beings are being dehumanized as “disorder” to be managed, punished, or disappeared.

@newframeworks.bsky.social co-owner Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz was violently abducted by ICE on June 14th, along with his 18 year old stepdaughter, Heidi. Support them and learn more about how ICE, building, and everything are connected here: www.newframeworks.com/support-our-...

We are blowing past our modest climate thresholds faster than expected: “irreversible tipping points in the climate system — like the melting of Arctic ice sheets or the wide-scale collapse of coral reefs — are closer at hand than scientists previously believed.” from archive.is/202505291047...

Our first TLS Talk with Ace McArleton starts in less an hour! We'll talk about New Frameworks' SEED program, and hear from the first couple program graduates. Tune in for free and ask your questions!

The Last Straw Magazine@thelaststrawmag.bsky.social · last yr.

Join our live video call May 28 w/ New Frameworks co-founder Ace McArleton as he talks about the SEED program, which helps make sure "high-performance, carbon-smart, and socially just building practices are accessible, scalable, and shared." Register for free : www.eventbrite.com/e/ace-mcarle...

The 1st #strawhouse in Europe was renovated after ~100 years. I asked the cncp-feuillette.fr about problems with the renovation for a lecture: "We didn't need to carry out any major renovations, just plastering and limewash paint, because it was in very good condition."

“Unlike many carbon removal solutions still in development, biomass building products are already commercially manufactured in the United States and globally.” Even if you just skim this, the conventional material carbon and monetary cost comparisons are worth a look: rmi.org/insight/buil...?

Building with Biomass: A New American Harvest - RMI

How manufacturing building products from domestically sourced upcycled biomass can create more jobs and affordable healthy housing

rmi.org

Join our live video call May 28 w/ New Frameworks co-founder Ace McArleton as he talks about the SEED program, which helps make sure "high-performance, carbon-smart, and socially just building practices are accessible, scalable, and shared." Register for free : www.eventbrite.com/e/ace-mcarle...

Good clarifying piece that calls for building new institutions and points out architecture's connection to everything, requiring that "we...all become architecture critics"

kate wehwalt@katewagner.wehwalt.net · last yr.

wrote about how trump is going to annihilate the field of architecture for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/poli...

A recent study found that on a global scale soil is getting worse at retaining moisture: www.carbonbrief.org/global-soil-... It also found that dry soil is a more significant cause of sea level rise than previously thought, creating even more ripe conditions for droughts, floods, wildfires.

You may have heard that a new book called Abundance came out recently, with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson claiming to offer a way out of climate crisis that would be neither uncomfortable nor unpopular. Critical reviews quickly came out picking apart the book's oversimplifications:

We're new here, but not new to the world. We've been putting out stuff about natural building and ecological design for almost 33 years! Here's a little bit about a few DIY-ers helped revive natural building methods: www.thelaststraw.org/a-history-of...