Author to discuss building with earth blocks

Eco Centro staff will showcase its earth block machine.

By Mardio Lattimore

sac-ranger@alamo.edu

Bruce King, author of “The New Carbon Architecture,” will give a lecture at 6:30 p.m. Oct 11 in the theater in McCreless Hall.

The lecture is sponsored by Sinkin Eco Centro and the Earth and Construction Institute.

Eco Centro staff members will showcase the building of earth blocks by using the center’s earth block machine before the lecture at 5:30 p.m. on the lawn outside McCreless

Meredith Miller, director of Eco Centro, said, “It makes bricks out of dirt. There’s dirt everywhere, so it a pretty usable building material.”

Miller explained this machine can build houses that are energy-efficient, require less maintenance and are weather-resistant and fireproof.

There are architects in the United States who using this machine to build houses for new neighborhoods, she said.

A book signing for King’s book will be hosted by the Twig Book Shop after his lecture.

King is a structural engineer with 30 years of private consulting experience and 25 years in the Green Building Movement.

He has served as a green-clean tech adviser to numerous startup companies and other organizations.

He has worked on high-rise structures in San Francisco, aircraft remodeling in Miami, Tahitian resorts, Buddhist monasteries in the Colorado Rockies, passive solar designs all over the world, and hundreds of houses of ever shape throughout North America, according to his website at https://bruce-king.com/.

He is co-founder and director of the Ecological Building Network, a nonprofit coalition of engineers, builders, and architects.

He is also co-founder of Green Building Press and has written three books, “Buildings of Earth and Straw” published in 1996, “Making Better Concrete” in 2005 and “Design of Straw Bale Buildings” in 2006.

Ticket prices are $10 for students, $35 for non-students and $25 for members of the American Group of Architects and Earth and Construction Institute.

To register for this event, visit https://aiasa/bruce-king.

For information, call Miller at 210-486-0418