LIVING BUILDING MAKERS: Creating Sustainable Buildings That Renew Our World - Softcover

Jonathan A. Wright is an accomplished maker with more than forty-five years experience as an expert builder specializing in the construction and design of sustainable, healthy, high-performance buildings. His penchant for craft is evidenced beyond the built environment as a published poet of several works including After the Rain (2014) and Season of Dreams (2018).

In 1970, Jonathan joined the first entering class at Hampshire College where he thrived in the non-traditional educational setting. He enjoyed the quality of life in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts so much that he decided to stay, joined by his wife, pianist Meg Kelsey Wright, where they made their family home in Northampton. He founded Wright Builders, Inc. in 1974, and the firm has since achieved more than forty LEED certifications in addition to the R.W. Kern Center and the Hitchcock Center for the Environment Living Buildings.

Perhaps even greater than his passion for wood, water, food, notes, or words, Jonathan cares about people and the richness derived from learning their personal stories. His overarching compassion for the health of people and the planet is ingrained in everything he makes.

If you have seen these remarkable structures, you will want to read the stories behind them. But even if you have never been to Hampshire College, the stories in Living Building Makers will bring the process of sustainable building alive - to call them Living Buildings is entirely appropriate, for they stem from real people with real hopes and dreams. --Bill McKibben, author Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College

Architects, perhaps understandably, get the lion share of the public credit for exceptional buildings. But Living Building Makers introduces us to the engineers, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, and other unsung heroes who all perform at their peaks to achieve ultra-high-performance structures. This book is a powerful reminder that it takes a village to create Living Buildings. --Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt Foundation Principal national organizer of the first Earth Day

Living Building Makers is a life-restoring account of deep green and humane design and construction projects. It is as if, after all these years, we have found How I Built That Ark, a book written by Noah to describe how he toiled... by hand, with boards close by, and with lots of inspired help. --Christopher Lydon, Radio Open Source