Founded in 2013, Bldus is a Washington-based architecture firm founded by Andrew Linn and Jack Becker–two friends who first met at Cornell University, in 2006. In the years since they launched the practice, the firm has developed a reputation for designing buildings that use cutting-edge alternative construction systems, sustainable and salvaged materials and highly efficient HVAC and window systems.
Bldus has developed a philosophy–farm-to-shelter–that views buildings the same way people view sustainable cuisine–fresh ingredients grown locally, sourced in a sustainable way and assembled creatively. The firm also has developed creative ideas for placemaking, using underutilized spaces in the alleys behind D.C.’s many row houses. More creative projects are in the offing.
Linn and Becker have now put their ideas into a new recipe book of sorts. Home on Earth: Recipes of Healthy Houses (ORO Editions) is part recipe book, part monograph. It looks at the ingredients that go into a healthy, natural house (sustainable materials, energy efficient systems) and how the process can be replicated to create thoughtful, healthy and sustainable homes in the Mid-Atlantic region.
We recently caught up with Linn to ask him about the book and to expand on the firm’s philosophy.
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Design Vibes: What is the main point of Home on Earth: Recipes for Healthy Houses?
Andrew Linn: Home on Earth celebrates the combining of natural materials to create inhabitable space, reminding us of our ever-evolving connection to nature and our reciprocal relationship to Planet Earth. It also aims to establish a framework based on culinary references that liberates natural materials from stifling stigmas. Despite the critical importance of biogenic materials to the architectural legacy of this continent, they suffer from harmful cultural associations, to rural/rustic architecture, to 1970’s eco-architecture, and to formal biophilic architecture. Home on Earth reframes architecture alongside food and considers what a regional cuisine might mean to building culture.
DV: Is the book a call to action for other architects or for consumers?
AL: The book is divided into three chapters: Home Cooking: image- and text-based recipes of built houses designed to communicate with consumers about the beauty and intrigue of natural architecture; House Cuisine: building material collages designed to imitate haute cuisine dishes, connecting to foodies who might not otherwise give much consideration to the spaces they inhabit; Back of House: unbuilt projects represented through models featuring food and kitchen items, a creative take on model making that might be of interest to architecture students seeking strategies to bring together food-making and space-making. Throughout the book, hand-sketched details are the true recipes of these houses and can be deciphered by curious architects.
DV: What is considered a healthy house?
AL: The ambiguity of the term healthy is healthy. As opposed to metrics quantifying levels of performance, sustainability, passivity, regenerativeness, etc, pursuing a healthy architecture allows for the recalibration of definitions and expectations with each project while maintaining focus on subjects surrounding the buildings themselves. Relationships between inhabitants and their shelter, architecture and its context, and materials and their sources are at times too complex for metrics, better left to metaphor and poetics, yet a subjective goodness can still be assessed by tracking a material back to its literal roots in the ground. We consider the health of people, of the Earth, and of the building itself.
DV: When you say “recipe,” I think of ingredients. Are these ingredients costly or lead to a costlier house?
AL: In the same way that farm-to-table cuisine has had trickle-down effects leading to, for instance, salads on the menu at McDonald’s and Sweetgreens everywhere, a farm-to-shelter building material cuisine can be implemented at different price points and in different applications. Some healthy material systems even save money. Cork panels can double as an (often required) exterior insulation envelope and a building’s exterior siding, reducing the number of cladding layers and lowering costs. Some of the ingredients we use at Bldus are meant to save time while providing superior performance, like bamboo-and-eucalyptus pre-manufactured panelized framing systems, while some showcase the time and care that goes into a building’s construction, like hand-woven willow screens.
DV: When it comes to a healthy home, are the ingredients more important than the process?
AL: Just as high quality ingredients taste great without being prepared through complex processes, healthy building materials are often at their best when manipulated the least. Ingredients are integral to the process at Bldus, where we take no material assumptions for granted. Our design process is infused with material awareness. We are matchmakers pairing materials to their proper usages.
DV: Is it hard convincing your clients to accept your “recipe” for their homes?
AL: Clients are already thinking about organic food and dye-free clothing, so shifting to think about the health of their homes comes naturally. The term farm-to-shelter has been instrumental in communicating a healthy architectural ethos to a broad audience due to its references to the popular farm-to-table dining movement. Like a chef pursuing their interpretation of a traditional regional cuisine, Bldus incorporates subjective taste, moments of serendipity, and creative expression into both architecture and research. Clients connect with this approach, especially when they also find a material or two that have stories that resonate with them.
Making a healthy home is easy if you don’t consider the act of thinking difficult. Contractors charge to think more about a project, so convincing them of the time- and labor-saving benefits of some natural ingredients is often a tougher sell than convincing clients to care about their health.
DV: It seems easy enough to build a healthy home, but how easy or difficult is it to make an existing home healthy?
AL: To make a home healthier for its inhabitants, interior finishes should be given sensitive consideration, mechanical ventilation systems should be optimized, and daylight should be maximized.
To make a home healthier for the future, a roof needs to be well-insulated, windows need to be tight, and the shell needs to be well-sealed, resulting in lower energy consumption.
To make healthier the origin points of a home’s materials, suppliers and the impacts they have on their communities should be independently verified, carbon footprints should be considered, and minimal processing given preference over highly processed materials.
DV: What would you say is the most important thing to know about a healthy home?
AL: It’s the future of housing.
