A new paradigm for a healthy world.
EKOTECTURE is an integrated design system which allows for environmentally benign co-existence between humans, their needs, and the planet.
Defined precisely: the functional integration of architecture, utility engineering and agriculture with the forces of nature — gravity geothermal, solar — within a single building or neighbourhood design, eliminating mechanical systems, fuel consumption, maintenance, pollution and human labour.
Utilities — light, cooking gas, water, waste management, and food production — integrated into the building's own structure.
Solar, gravity geothermal and other universal scientific principles power all systems. Zero fossil fuel. Zero combustion.
Zero pollution: taking nothing from the earth, air, or water — putting nothing back into the earth, air, or water.
A floating foundation designed to resist earthquake shear forces, hurricane winds up to 250 mph, floods, tidal surges, and tornadoes.
Built on the geometry of organic spiralling dodecahedral crystalline structures — sacred geometry as structural engineering.
To address global warming and every crisis facing our planet — through smart, sustainable, state-of-the-art living environments.
To create a healthy interaction with Earth in the way we live through Ekoarks — buildings and communities which produce their own lights, gas, water, waste recycling and food naturally within the infrastructure.
To protect life in the event of any disaster — earthquake, hurricane, tornado, fire, flood, tsunami — through the design of the floating foundation and intelligent skin.
To promote the criteria of EKOTECTURE by which all buildings and communities are created to protect humanity and our Earth.
To open-source the sub-systems refinements — making the knowledge available to every builder, every nation, every community.
To transfer this knowledge through webinars, videos, and direct collaboration with architects, developers, and governments worldwide.
"Ekotecture is Lee Porter Butler's sustainable, green and clean, legacy to humanity. The Ekotecture Integrated Living Systems has the potential to address not only environmental challenges — but also the social and economic challenges of the early 21st Century."
— From EKOTECTURE mission statementThe afternoon Lee asked the tree a question.
So many of the great enlightened ideas throughout history have happened in nature — and more often than not, by a tree. Buddha was born under a tree, received enlightenment under a tree, taught under a tree, and his last breath was breathed under a tree. Trees play a special role in the story of EKOTECTURE.
In 1975, the then thirty-five-year-old architect Lee Butler lay with his arms folded under his head, looking up at the magnificent pine tree on his property in remote west Tennessee. For ten years — since his introduction to Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path — Lee had been struggling to understand how to design a building that would stay cool in very warm weather and warm in cold weather, without mechanical systems.
"He asked the tree: How can you have everything you need without running hither and thither, so peacefully — and why does man have to struggle and run around the way he does just to get the basics? Then came this enormous flash of insight."
— Lee Porter Butler, April 1975The tree answered: Orientation to the sun. Mass contact with the earth. And insulation.
From that single April afternoon came the gravity geo-thermal envelope — Lee's first great gift to the human race. From the gravity geo-thermal envelope came the Ekose'a Home. From the Ekose'a Home came EKOTECTURE. The entire lineage of this architecture begins with a man, a pine tree, and a question asked in earnest.
Jan 3, 1940Nov 22, 2005
The architect who devoted his life to solving the crisis.
Environmental architect and inventor, Lee Porter Butler was heralded for his invention of the gravity geothermal envelope — a way to heat and cool houses without fossil fuels, using only natural geothermal convection, with no moving parts.
His work was case-studied by the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the US Department of Energy, and found to be the most energy efficient, CO₂-benign homes ever studied. Published 1981. He taught at the University of California Berkeley in the Graduate School of Design and Planning.
The Ekose'a Home was featured on the covers of Popular Science, Better Homes and Gardens, Mother Jones, and Shelter magazine. During 1978–1981 alone, press coverage exceeded 65 million pages. 40,000 floor plan books were sold.
Lee devoted the remainder of his life to solving the crisis facing our planet and humanity — dwindling resources, rising sea levels, and a world underserved in food, water, and shelter. EKOTECTURE is that solution.
From one pine tree to a global building code.
Ekose'a is an ancient Greek word meaning the essence of being. To the ancient Greeks — as to all ancient peoples — water, food, and shelter were the essentials of existence.
The Ekose'a Home surrounds the house with a film of earth-heated air, and uses gravity convection to move it — eliminating the conventional heating and cooling system entirely. Quiet. Low-maintenance. No moving parts. During the ice storm of 1973–74, with power lines down for miles, Lee measured the temperature at the highest point of his greenhouse at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit — at 6 in the morning.
From Ekose'a came EKOTECTURE: the logical evolution of the Ekose'a Home and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, now expressed as Biospheres — organically conceived structures, vessels, arks, and floating living environments. Co-created by Lee Porter Butler and Jill Karlin Butler in 1992. EKOTECTURE evolved over a twenty-year period and stands on the shoulders of everything Lee ever built.
"Buildings will not take anything from the earth, air or water in their operation, nor put anything into the earth, air, or water. This is the building code EKOTECTURE proves can be realised — leading to a clean, healthy future for the entire world."
— Lee Porter Butler, 1996What is EKOTECTURE?
Biospheres are organically conceived structures — buildings, vessels, arks, mobile living environments — manufactured according to the following database of characteristics and principles. Patent pending: Sustainable Construction Structures.
EKOTECTURE offers superior returns on invested capital due to decreased life-cycle costs: minimum exposure to losses from natural disasters; no requirement to supply the system with natural resources; no requirement to maintain real estate rights of way and distribution infrastructure pipelines; no maintenance caused by heat-producing friction, combustion, or nuclear power technology.
Source: EKOTECTURE 1995Bring EKOTECTURE to life.
EKOTECTURE exists as a complete architectural system, a tested and validated body of research, and a global building code waiting to be adopted. The next step is proof of concept — the first full-scale Biosphere.
If you are a developer, municipality, investor, or government body ready to sponsor the first EKOTECTURE project — write directly. This is the most important conversation of the next century. Jill reads every message.
Film: Sustainable Life (Show 4) by Blue Green Akron · Podcast: EKOTECTURE: Architecture for Prosperity, Freedom and Peace — both embedded below.
EKOTECTURE in motion.
Two windows into the Vision — a film and a conversation. Together they tell the story that no technical specification can: why EKOTECTURE matters, how it came to be, and what it asks of us.
Sustainable Life — Show 4
A documentary window into the EKOTECTURE vision — the floating Biospheres, the self-sustaining communities, the world Lee Porter Butler and Jill Karlin set out to build together.
EKOTECTURE: Architecture for Prosperity, Freedom and Peace
Jill Karlin Butler in conversation — tracing the lineage from Lee's pine tree epiphany in 1975 through to EKOTECTURE as the architectural paradigm shift of the 21st century. Her voice, her words, the full story.
Every painting Jill makes is an act of EKOTECTURE.
Every colour is a building material. Every Dolphin is a blueprint. I cannot yet build EKOTECTURE everywhere — so I paint it. Each canvas is a proof of concept: that beauty and sustainability are the same thing, that paradise on Earth is not a wish but a design specification.
The EKOTECTURE dispatch
Architecture · philosophy · ocean activism · Art — the lineage, continuing
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