A trade school for buildings that give back more than they take

What we teach

The curriculum is written from four decades of building these structures, mostly in the high desert of northern New Mexico. It is not a survey of green building. It is how the work is actually done: what the wall section is, what the tube diameter is, what the soil test tells you, what the inspector will ask, and what the building does at three in the morning in January.

Fourteen courses cover every system of an off-grid building in the order you build it - site and climate, permits and drawings, structure, thermal design, water, liquid waste, power, food, and running the job. A specialization course takes the same thinking from the single building out to raw land and community scale.

Why it is a non-profit

Housing is the problem. A building that costs little to run, that needs no utility connection, and that can be built by the people who will live in it is a housing answer, not an architectural style. Making that knowledge expensive would defeat it.

Tuition covers the work of writing and teaching. What is left funds scholarships and humanitarian and disaster-relief building. Our methods are published rather than licensed, which means anyone can take them and build, including people who will compete with us. One builder puts up dozens of homes a year; a trained workforce puts up thousands.

Where the curriculum comes from

Not from research. Every course is written out of work on real sites - buildings that were designed, permitted, built, occupied and then lived in long enough to know what held up. What gets learned on a site becomes a lesson; what a lesson clarifies goes back to the next site.

Where we work

Taos County is our home ground and the hardest case we know. Materials come in from Albuquerque, Santa Fe or Denver, skilled trades are scarce, the terrain is steep and the winters are real. A method that produces an affordable, comfortable house here will work almost anywhere.

Students come to the campus at the Pangea Community for immersive sessions, and field study runs on the buildings actually going up - two ICF Earthships at the community, a log cabin retrofit and greenhouse in Angel Fire, and the Chamisa Verde affordable homes in Taos.

Everyone deserves a dignified, healthy, and affordable place to live.