The Team

Rachel Preston Prinz

Taos and Albuquerque, New Mexico

Rachel Preston Prinz is the Founding Director of Archinia and Architecture for EveryBody. Rachel's passion resides in discovering the genius loci - the Spirit of Place. After having been a project manager in traditional architecture firms for 10+ yrs, Rachel started Archinia in 2007, and its non-profit offshoot, Built For Life, in 2012. Rachel has given multiple TEDx and Pecha Kucha talks on sustainability, pattern languages, and historic preservation and is a well-regarded designer and architectural researcher, and leads ground-breaking research into traditional and modern means of earth sheltering. Rachel is the lead author and team captain of this effort.

Debra Bailey 

Taos, New Mexico

Debra Bailey is a veteran agent with over 20 years of experience in the field of property and casualty insurance. Debra is the foremost expert in obtaining insurance for your Earthship in the US, and works in one of the only firms who cover Earthships – Brown and Brown Insurance in Taos. Debra will help readers navigate requirements to obtain insurance and will answer insurance-related questions that have a direct effect on your ability to obtain financing.

Carrie Christopher                                                          Albuquerque, NM

Carrie Christopher is founder and co-owner of Concept Green LLC, a national women-owned sustainability consulting firm based in Albuquerque, and Founder of The Soul Clinic. As a practitioner of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Carrie continually explores the relationship between mindfulness and sustainability. Carrie’s superpowers are communications, training, inspiring, and facilitating multiple perspectives that foster meaningful change in service to the planet and to humanity. Carrie helped us identify ways to improve architecture and landscape in order to achieve a higher degree of sustainability.

Michael Curry, P.E., S.E.

Charlottesville, VA

A licensed Professional Engineer in Virginia and a licensed Structural Engineer in California, Oregon, and Washington, Michael Curry brings his years of experience in commercial, residential, new, and historic construction to bear on every project. He is an innovative, hands-on professional with the expertise to work with Architects, Contractors, homeowners, and public sector clients. Michael helped us to make the chapter on structural systems shine.

Richard Flatau                                                                                 Merrill, Wisconsin

Richard Flatau built his mortgage-free cordwood home thirty-five years ago in the woods of northern Wisconsin. Since then, he has written books, magazine articles, and has conducted hands-on workshops around the country. Richard has provided consultation to thousands of owner/builders and put on successful cordwood building conferences. Richard shares his Best Practices for cordwood construction with us to help readers get homes that are Code-compliant, energy-efficient, beautiful, and affordable.

Sigi Koko

Washington, DC & Ambler, PA

Sigi Koko founded Down to Earth design in 1998 to provide sustainable building design services. She focuses on projects that are ecologically sensible and on the forefront of sustainable design. Sigi holds a Masters of Architecture degree from UT-Austin. Sigi worked for HOK in Washington, DC, where she provided green building expertise on many projects. She also created their Healthy & Sustainable Product Database and contributed to several HOK publications including The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design. Sigi offered chapters for the book as well as feedback on questions.

Shannon Colvin Matteson

Albuquerque, NM

Shannon is an interior designer in Albuquerque who has decorated over 10,000 rooms. Her background includes styling for high-profile social events and retail spaces, as well as set design for TV production. Shannon holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts & is certified by the Interior Redesign Industry Specialists (IRIS). Her website is http://www.emburinteriors.com. Shannon will be offering readers tips and tricks to make the most out of their spaces as well as helping maximize curb appeal.

Chiara Riccardi  

Cisenantica, Italy

Chiara is an architectural researcher in sustainable design and earth-sheltering at the University of Bologna. Chiara worked for several months doing exhaustive research on Earthships and cataloguing the hundreds of pages of data on Earthship builds around the world into a coherent package from which we could build the first two chapters of this book. She also used part of her internship to research and prepare the chapters for Rammed Earth and Earthbag building systems.

Maggie Schlarb                                                                    

Durango, Colorado

Maggie is a Mindful Life Coach and Nia Black Belt Practitioner. She is the creator of Body Soul Journ. Maggie has spent 16 of the last 27 months camping internationally either in a tent, a pop up camper, or a camper van with her husband, a professional runner, and their three year old son. As part of her contribution to this effort, Maggie will share her insight into simple and sustainable living, living with what you have, and living as a group in small spaces.

Steve Scott                                                           

Walnut Creek, California

Steve Scott is a twenty-nine year veteran of the real estate and mortgage industries. Steve has worked in originations, mortgage underwriting, secondary marketing, due diligence for mortgage-backed securities, Broker Price Opinion valuations, and quality control reviews for investors. Steve has held a Real Estate license in the state of California since 2003. Steve has been rated in the top 10% of all RE/MAX agents in California, and was Gold Service Certified by Quality Service Certification. Steve helps readers by laying out a road to get financing.

Craig Schreiber                                                                 

Leadville, Colorado

Craig Schreiber opened Land Art, his architecture and landscape design firm, in 1977. Craig is an expert illustrator, land planner, Outside Architect, and graphic artist. Craig is frequently on the dreams & schemes teams for development teams with an earthen sensitivity. Take a spin through http://www.landart.info for a glimpse of his style. Craig, an expert not only on landscape but also on block construction alternatives for the tire walls, joined us to talk about Durisol block.

Asha Stout             

Taos, New Mexico

Asha Stout serves on the faculty at the University of New Mexico-Taos where he teaches hands-on building and design courses in the Green Technology Program. Asha has experience in conventional to radical off-grid building, sustainable forestry, wildland firefighting, and disaster response. These perspectives inform his view of safe housing as an unalienable right and ecological restoration as a grave necessity. Asha is passionate about the pursuit of “Lomakatsi” - life in balance. Asha offered insights into how we could address sustainability in entirely new ways.

Pratik Zaveri                                                                                     Gujarat, India

Pratik is fluent in sustainable design and site supervision for residential, recreational, cultural, commercial, and urban design. Pratik is a master of merging local materials and traditional technologies with contemporary building practices, and was a Teaching Assistant in the Green Technologies Program at the University of New Mexico-Taos. Pratik works with Building Modelling Consultants in India performing energy and daylight analysis and carbon emissions checks. Pratik helped analyze the research conducted on existing Earthships, and contributed expertise in helping us to make a plan for how to do buildings better.

Our Inspirations

Carole Crews
Taos, New Mexico

Carole Crews is a renown earth-plaster expert who hosts sustainable earth building workshops in Taos, New Mexico. While we did not interview Carole specifically for this book, much of how we have been influenced by earth based building has been directly influenced by author Rachel Prinz’ visit to one of Carole’s workshops for a magazine article several years ago. We cannot not acknowledge Carole’s inspiration for this effort. She’s part of our WHY.

Illac Diaz
Makati City, Phillipines

Illac Diaz is a TED Fellow, recognized for his efforts as a social entrepreneur empowering communities through the use of sustainable construction and technologies. Illac is a graduate of MIT. His Liters of Light and MyShelter Foundations are in the forefront of research in rammed earth, bamboo, and PET plastic bottle construction. Illac has offered countless insights on earthships in tropical climates, as well as passive solar daylighting techniques to this effort.