Who We Are
BuildWell is a nonprofit multimedia project that informs and inspires the design and building industries to embrace climate-friendly practices. The content we produce makes low-carbon design and construction more inviting, easy, and practical.
BuildWell started as a series of conferences in the San Francisco area, beginning in 1999, focused on materials — the stuff we build with. The importance of those materials has risen sharply as we’ve come to recognize that most of the climate impact of construction happens upfront, from the substantial emissions resulting from the manufacture of building products.
Since 1999 global warming has become a climate crisis, and we need to move faster, much faster. Most people in our industry can’t get to conferences, and don’t read books. But we’ll all watch a short video, so the BuildWell Project was conceived to:
- Identify the low-hanging fruits of climate friendly design
- Package them in short and also longer “explainer” videos
- Develop slide decks for university teachers
- For free, and as quickly as possible.
BuildWell is a project of the Ecological Building Network and its founder, Bruce King, a recovering structural engineer and ardent believer that we can transform the built environment into a carbon absorber within a generation.
EBNet Board of Directors
Bruce King
Executive Director and Founder,
Ecological Building Network
Sarah Weller King
EBNet Secretary/Treasurer and
Business Manager
Collaborating Organizations
Videographers
Team 1 Pizzicato Productions – Todd Boeckelheide and Jen Bradwell
Team 2 Eastpeak Media – Dan Brown and Scott Kirkeeng
Team 3 Soulfood Productions – Elias Campbell
Team 4 Measure Twice – Brian Berberich and Ben Staub
Founder
Bruce King is the author of “The New Carbon Architecture” and “Build Beyond Zero” with Chris Magwood, and has been a structural engineer for over 45 years, designing buildings of every size and type all over the world. He is also the author of the ASTM standard for earthen construction, the Marin County Low-Carbon Concrete code, and three additional books: “Buildings of Earth and Straw”, “Making Better Concrete”, and “Design of Straw Bale Buildings”. He has recently retired from practicing engineering and is concentrating on climate work.
Island Press
“Mixing humor and deep knowledge, a compelling story of how humans can transform their built environment… just the right tone of optimism and can-do with a touch of history and philosophy. Down to earth and visionary.”
— Jerry Brown, former Governor of California
New Society Publishers
“Truly a fantastic, timely, important book!”
— Paul Hawken, Author of Drawdown and Regeneration
Engineering News Record
Awarded to Bruce King for initiating the world’s first low-carbon building code.
