The Ecological Building Network (aka EBNet) was founded in 1999 by Bruce King, a practicing structural engineer in Marin County, as a project of The Tides Center of San Francisco. King first became interested in green building in the late 1970’s, and soon encountered real challenges in finding the information he needed to work with innovative building materials. This experience, and the design of the groundbreaking Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland, California, led him to write his first book, Buildings of Earth and Straw, in 1996. The challenges he encountered in researching the book made it clear that a clearing house for information about building with energy-saving, ecologically-friendly materials was much needed.
With the help of Bruce's wife, Sarah Weller King, and a board of advisors, EBNet began the work of connecting the people developing information about how to design with alternative materials, how those materials perform, and how to work with them, with the people who were interested in putting that information to work (designers, builders, engineers and building officials). Ecological Building Network became a free-standing 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in April of 2006.
A few of our projects to date include:
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The First International Conference on Ecological Building Structure in 2001. Attended by 80 green building experts from 15 countries, this conference resulted in the creation of an international network of academics, designers, builders and engineers who continue to collaborate in their shared goal of reducing the impact of buildings on the environment. The collected papers are still in demand, and the conference provided the impetus to create Build Well™ as an ongoing forum of exploration and collaboration.
2001 EBnet Conference
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Straw Bale Fire Test - A comprehensive testing program on the structural, thermal, fire-resistive and other performance qualities of straw bale wall assemblies. This research, funded in large part by the California Air Resources Board in 2003, was instrumental in removing industry and regulatory hurdles to full acceptance of this energy-saving, low-carbon building system.
- Completion of comprehensive revisions to the ASTM Standard E2392, Standard Guide for Design of Earthen Wall Building Systems. Four years of effort went into passage of this standard, which will help the billions of people who build with earth in both the developed and developing worlds. Dissemination of ASTM Standard E2392 will serve as an international guide that will bring greater safety to the poorest of the poor – one out of every four people on earth live in earth-based homes. In light of the unnecessarily catastrophic effects of recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, China and Pakistan, this standard comes at an opportune moment.
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In January of 2010 about a hundred people gathered from all over the world in a quiet little spot to talk about buildings, and building materials, for a healthy, low-carbon world. The Build Well 2010 Symposium was a huge success, and highlighted the need for the leading edge innovators and thinkers to talk, bounce ideas around, share interesting news, and simply be together. We’ll do it again in 2012, but in the meantime hope to keep the conversations going, and open them for view to, and comment from, a much wider audience. Thus we launch the Build Well Forum.
Build Well 2010 Symposium
