The Full Story
More of the Story & Press Coverage
Forty years of it, in newsprint, starting with the magazine that started everything.
The cover that changed everything for a fourteen-year-old kid during a frost bitten Canadian winter: a double-skin passive solar home, working with the sun instead of fighting it.
Before the eco-architecture practice took full shape, a nonsmoking, non-alcohol, organic food vegetarian restaurant and Dance Studio opened as Cadence, (prelaunch was dubbed the DeCadence), full moon drumming fitted out with natural varnishes and paints enlivening a very organic atmosphere. Same general philosophy, different building type.
Eco Ltd's approach to healthy homes: passive solar design, thermal mass, and avoiding the more toxic materials common in conventional building at the time.
On directing the Environmental Design Centre and pushing the industry on toxic materials, years before "biophilic design" had a name.
The Forbes family home in Paekakariki: a curved roofline shaped around the site's hills and an anthropomorphic mission.
The country's first retail outlet stocking ecologically sound building materials and systems, in Wellington's Willis Street Village.
"We'll show you that building an eco-house doesn't need to cost the earth." Same phone number, same Willis Street Village address, two sides of the same practice.
Design Your Own Eco home workshop ran in Christchurch got some media attention, in the wake of the earthquakes, a weekend workshop helping residents design and rebuild on eco-friendly principles.
