Essential architecture
for a living planet.

A complete, living code for how humanity can inhabit the Earth — intelligently, harmoniously, sustainably. Jill and Lee’s legacy to humanity, carried forward.

A new code for the built world

Ekotecture is not a building trend.
It is not a certification.
It is a complete, living code.

A code for how humanity can inhabit the Earth — intelligently, harmoniously, sustainably. At its core, Ekotecture recognizes a simple truth.

The way we build determines the way we live.

Architecture is not separate from life — it is the foundation of our relationship with the planet, with each other, and with ourselves.

We are now in a global paradigm shift. Humanity is being called to reimagine its place on Earth — not as a consumer of resources, but as a conscious participant in a living system. Ekotecture answers that call.

The record
The origin · April 1975

A man, a pine tree, and a question asked in earnest.

So many of the great enlightened ideas throughout history have happened in nature. 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 April 1975, the then thirty-five-year-old architect Lee Porter 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 1975
01 · The first answer

Orientation to the sun.

Every Ekotecture structure faces the sun deliberately, drawing warmth and light through its envelope rather than fighting them.

02 · The second answer

Mass contact with the earth.

The earth holds a constant temperature beneath its surface. Ekotecture buildings are anchored to that thermal mass, pulling heat in winter and coolness in summer.

03 · The third answer

Insulation.

A double envelope holds the orientation and the earth’s mass in equilibrium — with no fire, no machinery, and no moving parts.

The Medon Home · Tennessee, 1973

A fourteen-level prototype, an ice storm, and an 80°F greenhouse.

In the winter of 1973–74, an ice storm tore through west Tennessee, knocking out power for twenty miles in every direction. Lee climbed the levels of the home he had spent seven years designing — eleven thousand square feet, twenty-seven rooms, four waterfalls, and a thirty-five-hundred-square-foot south-facing greenhouse.

At dawn, with icicles cracking against the windows and outside temperatures at twenty degrees, the top level of the greenhouse held at eighty degrees Fahrenheit. No heating system was running. No electricity. And in that pre-dawn hour, no sunlight — the warmth was rising from the earth itself, drawn and held by the envelope. This is the genius of the gravity geo-thermal envelope.

It would take two more years of analysing thermodynamics and questioning a pine tree before Lee could explain what he had observed. The gravity geo-thermal envelope is the shoulders upon which EKOTECTURE stands.

11,000 sq ft14 levels · 27 rooms
80°FGreenhouse, no heat, ice storm

Lee Porter Butler · January 3, 1940 — November 22, 2005

Born
January 3, 1940
Passed
November 22, 2005
Invention
Gravity geo-thermal envelope
Validated by
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Published
US Dept. of Energy, 1981
Faculty
UC Berkeley, Graduate School of Design
Press 1978–81
65 million pages
Archive
NC State University Libraries
Lee Porter Butler

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 among 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, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, and Shelter magazine. During 1978–1981 alone, press coverage exceeded 65 million pages.

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. The way humans live in harmony with the Earth.

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.

Ekose'a Homes — book front cover, 1979 Ekose'a Homes — book back cover, 1979
The book · Ekose’a Homes · 1979

Self-published in response to the gas crisis.

In 1978, Lee founded Ekose’a Inc. in San Francisco. A year later, responding to an outpouring of inquiries about his work — the gas lines, the fuel shortages, the fear — he self-published Ekose’a Homes, a book of plans, perspectives, and photographs of envelope homes built across six climatological zones in the United States.

By the spring of 1981, more than forty-five thousand books had been sold, along with fifteen thousand sets of working drawings and two thousand custom architectural commissions. Thousands of Ekose’a Homes were under construction simultaneously.

Then April 1981 came — and the press fell silent. Reagan’s administration ended the alternative energy tax credits, interest rates climbed to twenty-one per cent, and residential construction halted. The book remains as the architectural record of what Ekose’a achieved before the work was forced underground.

45,000+Books sold
by spring 1981
15,000Working drawings
distributed
2,000Custom architectural
commissions
Detail of furniture from the Ekose'a Home — designed by Lee Porter Butler
Every detail integrated · Every joint considered

Ekotecture extends from the orientation of a building to the smallest joint of a piece of furniture inside it. Lee designed the homes — and the way of living within them — as a single, integrated system.

The technical specification

Fifteen principles for a building
that heals rather than harms.

Each Ekotecture biosphere is designed according to these fifteen principles — organically conceived, structurally integrated, and tested against every climate and disaster scenario.

01

Integrates architectural and structural functions with utility infrastructure — water, gas, electricity, and sanitary — into one unified system.

02

Utilises solar, gravity geothermal and other universal scientific energies to power all systems — photovoltaics, solar water heaters, evaporative condenser purifiers, biodigestors, solar chimneys, evaporative cooling tubes.

03

Eliminates destructive friction and combustion — ending the maintenance cycles and expenses they cause.

04

Produces zero pollution: takes nothing from the earth, air, or water; returns nothing to the earth, air, or water.

05

Utilises the geometry of organic spiralling dodecahedral stacking crystalline structures to form super-strength elements within the core building modules.

06

Utilises indigenous cementous materials and recycled plastics to produce inexpensive, lightweight, fireproof, mould-resistant structural modules — light enough to float.

07

Utilises compartmentalised flotation tanks in its floating foundation platform — resisting seismic shear forces, hurricane winds, floods, tidal surges, and tornadoes. Designed for 250 mph winds.

08

Utilises organic wastes to produce organic fertiliser and methane gas.

09

Maintains comfortable interior temperatures year-round, in any climate, using the gravity geothermal convection double air envelope — eliminating all mechanical heating and cooling systems.

10

Captures, filters, and stores rainwater for all interior and irrigation uses — eliminating the need for municipal water connections.

11

Grows food year-round inside attached greenhouses, drawing on the same passive thermal envelope that conditions the residence.

12

Eliminates external utility dependencies — the structure produces, stores, and recycles its own water, energy, food, and waste.

13

Uses sacred geometry — not as ornament, but as the structural logic that gives the building its strength and harmony.

14

Lasts for centuries, not decades. Modular, repairable, and designed against obsolescence at every joint.

15

Replicable across climates, cultures, and economies. The Ekotecture biosphere is open-source code — meant to be built, not patented.

The work in motion

Sustainable Life — the Ekotecture documentary.

A film by Blue Green Akron featuring Lee Porter Butler’s vision and the gravity geo-thermal envelope in practice.

Source: vimeo.com/bluegreenakron

“

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 · 1996
Ekose’a · the essence of being

Ekotecture is Lee Porter Butler’s sustainable, green and clean, legacy to humanity.

In ancient Greek, Ekose’a means “the essence of being.” The architecture Lee discovered was never about a style or a brand — it is about how humans, at the deepest level, belong on this planet.

After Lee’s passing in 2005, the work continued. The papers, drawings, and patents are archived at the North Carolina State University libraries. Jill carries the philosophy through her painting, her writing, and now through the show that bears their shared story.

NC State Libraries archive →