Someday we hope to build a cob home, built up out of the earth. The vision is of building a few hundred square feet a year of indoor or outdoor space until all our desires are met, following a process like that articulated so well by Christopher Alexander in his Timeless Way of Building. The prospect of living inside a sculpture of our own devising is profoundly satisfying, and a kitchen, open hearth area, bathroom and loft can be built reasonably in a single year. Add a master suite and proper bathing the next year, maybe a library or a child's cottage, a greenhouse...

Modern building methods are appalling on so many levels. Wind, for one thing. The square corner creates stresses that allow delamination of the sheathing, and then all that fiberglass is useless to retain heat. I've been in year-old stick-and-fiber houses where in a gale you could feel it when the wind changed direction. There are many more natural options, nearly all of them better choices than the de facto standard. For that matter, without getting hippy about it, switching to urethane insulation and installing a heat pump below the foundation pour will make a profound difference in the heating and cooling efficiency of a modern home.