There is a category of traditional building technique that looks primitive and turns out to be doing something subtle, and thatch is the clearest example available.
The appearance suggests a…
There is a useful question to ask about any standardised object: what is actually setting the dimension?
For a great many things the answer is a material property or a…
There is a small group of building materials that go round in a circle, and lime is the clearest.
The cycle is truly closed. A rock is heated to drive…
There is a plant that behaves so differently from a tree that most of what people assume about it is wrong, starting with what it is.
Bamboo is a grass.…
There is a widely held picture of how concrete works, and almost every part of it is inverted.
The picture is that wet concrete is a thick paste which dries…