Natural Building

Natural building practices have been part of our core identity before natural building, energy efficiency, and sustainability were trendy. We don’t just use these terms: we deeply practice them. We walk our talk – and we help our clients do the same.

We’re excited to explore with you how this might look for your home, community, or business.

Our Philosophy

We deeply understand natural building – so you don’t have to!

We speak this language every day, but we know this may be a new world for you. New terms to learn. New ways to improve energy efficiency. New building materials and methods to consider.

If all of this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. We’ll meet you where you are. Together, we’ll find the joy in building an energy-efficient, single-family home or designing a sustainable, multifamily community.

We’ll work to make you feel comfortable with the design elements we suggest, and we will not talk over your head.

And if it turns out that you’re intrigued by the many possibilities for sustainable, natural building, we can take you as far down this road as you want to go.

While we can be known to geek out on all the ways a project can be natural and sustainable, we are also aware of our clients’ financial realities. Our high-end design work and budget-sensitive projects inform each other to mutual advantage. We won’t break your bank.

Our Method

Here are the steps we take as we design and build a natural, sustainable project, all while honoring your budget.

1. We encourage you to find a location and a site that allows you to live as delightful a life as possible. Can you walk to what you need within 15 minutes? Is the area you’ve chosen well served by mass transit?
2. We design for energy conservation. That includes strategies like passive solar, high-quality glass, super-insulation, and daylighting as well as ways to reduce your energy consumption requirements to a logical and reasonable level.
3. We think about ways to provide the energy your building needs with the most efficient mechanical systems that reasonably fit within your budget.
4. We look for ways to provide the needed energy renewably, either with on-site tools like solar panels or with off-site renewables.

Our Experience

At Caddis, we explore ways of living more lightly upon our earth in beautiful, healthy environments. We reflect our core value of sustainability in all our work.

We’ve highlighted below just a few of our natural building projects: a net-zero energy home in a harsh winter environment; the first net-zero and Passive House cohousing community in North America; rammed-earth homes in a Black township in South Africa; and a salvage yard canopy that integrates a PV system.