Basalt House
Durable Vintage is concerned with buildings that endure — their materials, their structures, their landscapes, and the long work of keeping them whole. What matters here is not what a building looks like when it is new, but what it becomes over time.
Basalt House
600-millimeter basalt aggregate walls, turf roof, geothermal integration. Extreme thermal mass designed for centuries of use in a landscape that splits lesser materials within a decade.
Salt Meadow Archive
Reclaimed timber and copper cladding on a raised foundation at the edge of a salt marsh. Built for flood resilience and the slow oxidation of coastal air.
Ridgeline Station
Steel frame and rammed earth on an exposed ridgeline. Photovoltaic skin, panoramic siting, and the particular silence of elevation.
Rammed Earth Construction
Compacted earth as structural wall — thermal mass, color stratification, and what happens to the surface over forty years of weather.
Bamboo as a Building Material
Tensile strength, rapid renewability, and the particular challenge of connections in a material that is neither wood nor steel.
The Science of Thermal Mass
How materials absorb, store, and release heat — and why the delay matters more than the quantity.
Reclaimed Wood in Architecture
The structural and aesthetic case for timber that has already lived one life. Provenance, grading, and what age does to grain.
Lime Mortar
A binder that breathes, flexes, and reabsorbs the carbon it released in firing. The mortar returns to stone.
Straw Bale Construction
Exceptional thermal resistance from an agricultural byproduct. What compressed straw can and cannot do, and what it asks in return.
Timber Frame Construction
Large sections, visible joinery, and a structural system that reveals exactly how it carries its load. What is legible can be tended.
Stone in Architecture
Mass, permanence, and the geology beneath the building expressed in the building itself. What stone offers and what it demands.
Adobe Bricks
Earth mixed with straw, formed into blocks, and dried in the sun. The oldest manufactured building material, and among the most thermally intelligent.
Hempcrete
A composite of hemp shiv and lime that insulates, regulates moisture, and sequesters carbon. What it does, what it cannot do, and why the distinction matters.
Cob Construction
Clay, sand, straw, and water mixed and stacked without formwork. A monolithic earth wall built by hand, one course at a time.
Natural Plasters and Renders
Clay, lime, and gypsum applied as surface coatings. The skin of the wall, and the first thing the weather touches.
Earthbag Construction
Soil-filled bags stacked in courses, tamped into walls, and reinforced with barbed wire. The bag is temporary. The earth is permanent.
Earth Sheltering
The ground itself as thermal envelope — stable temperature, massive insulation, and the membrane between building and soil that makes it all work.
Living Roofs
Vegetated roof assemblies that insulate, absorb stormwater, and change with the seasons. What grows on top of a building, and what the building must do to support it.
Concrete Alternatives
Fly ash, slag cement, geopolymer binders, and recycled aggregate. What can replace Portland cement, and what changes when it does.
Natural Fiber Insulation
Sheep's wool, hemp, cellulose, and wood fiber. Materials that trap air, buffer moisture, and decompose when their work is done.
The Lifecycle of Wood
From standing timber to structural member to eventual decay or reuse. How wood behaves over time, and what determines whether it persists.
Recycled Building Materials
Reclaimed timber, remelted steel, crushed concrete, cullet glass. Materials that carry the memory of prior service into new structural roles.
Sustainable Metal Alloys
Recycled steel, recovered aluminum, weathering steel. Metals remelted and recast without loss of fundamental properties — the recycling loop, in principle, closed.
Low-VOC Paints and Finishes
Water-based formulations, natural pigments, and mineral binders that cure without releasing volatile organic compounds into the enclosed air.
Materials with High Thermal Mass
Concrete, brick, stone, rammed earth, and water. Dense substances that absorb heat slowly, store it, and release it hours later.
Biodegradable Building Materials
Mycelium composites, hempcrete, straw bale, and natural fiber systems. Materials that grow, serve, and eventually return to the soil.
Eco-Friendly Insulation Materials
Cellulose, sheep's wool, hemp batt, cork, and straw. Fibrous and cellular structures that trap still air and resist heat flow through physical form.
Coming soon — short observations on materials, maintenance, and the work of paying attention to buildings over time.