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100 articles, most recently updated first
Bruce W. Davis is an American architect based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a member of the Solar Fools group. He has worked in passive solar and earth-building design since 1975…
Zomeworks Vice President (12+ years) and engineer-inventor. Held three patents (Beadwall, Integral Roof Cooling Container, and co-invented passive ventilation). Designed Frank's Ho…
Co-founder of Zomeworks Corporation with Steve Baer and Ed Heinz, c.1969-70. Co-organized the 1969 Alloy Conference with Steve and Holly Baer, the event that directly preceded Zome…
Current sole owner of Zomeworks Corporation per Wikipedia (an uncited claim there, most recently edited 2026-07-06 by an account named 'JoseBaer'). Grew up in Corrales, NM; Cornell…
Taos architect (The Architects, Taos) and named Cool Cell venture partner. Suggested overhead 8-inch PVC ceiling tanks to Steve Baer, a key Cool Cell development step (combined wit…
BS Mechanical Engineering (U of Maine at Orono). Licensed mechanical contractor NM. Chief Engineer of Coyne Solar Manufacturing (5 years, ~600 batch solar water heaters). Research …
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, and inventor best known for the geodesic dome. His work is a recurring background presence in the arc…
Assistant Professor of Architecture (urbanism) at IE University, Segovia, Spain, since 2018. Author of "Steve Baer and the Double-Play Thermosiphon" (ICON, 2025), the archive's mos…
Clark Richert (1941–2021) was a painter, pattern theorist, and educator born in Wichita, Kansas. He is most relevant to this archive as co-founder of Drop City and as the figure wh…
David A. Bainbridge (b. 1948, Schenectady, NY) — ecologist, passive-solar practitioner, and author. Founded the Passive Solar Institute. Member of the Living Systems design group i…
Vice President at Zomeworks Corporation per Wikipedia and LinkedIn/ZoomInfo listings. Tenure since approximately 2018; job functions listed as Entrepreneurship and Operations. The …
David Wright (b. 1941) — architect and passive solar pioneer. BS Architectural Engineering (Cal Poly SLO, 1964). Peace Corps architect in Tunisia and Guinea (1964-66). Apprenticed …
Co-founder of Zomeworks Corporation with Steve Baer and Barry Hickman, c.1969-70. Dome Cookbook (1968) records him working on new zome designs at Drop City before the founding. No …
Chemist and solar energy scientist at the University of Wisconsin (Solar Energy Laboratory, Engineering Experiment Station). Author of Direct Use of the Sun's Energy (Yale Universi…
Fred Turner is a Stanford communication professor and historian whose book From Counterculture to Cyberculture (University of Chicago Press, 2006) documents Steve Baer's direct pla…
Harold Hay (1909–2009) was an American chemist and inventor who developed the Skytherm roof pond passive cooling system — the earliest documented large-scale application of night-s…
American solar pioneer and inventor of the "Solaris" solar heating system. Presented "Solar Space Heating, Water Heating, Cooling in the Thomason Home" at the 1961 United Nations C…
Steve Baer's wife and collaborator. Died February 23, 2026, after battling Alzheimer's disease, per a private family communication since redacted from this archive (not independent…
Zomeworks spokesman and Architectural Cool Cell division figure. Quoted in a 2000 Albuquerque Journal article explaining the Cool Cell's water-pipe ceiling system, and credited in …
Coined the term 'boogie valve' for the floating plastic check valves used in Zomeworks' di-thermal wall prototypes — named because the plastic balls could be seen boogieing through…
Solar engineer (1908-1986) at Arizona State University. Manhattan Project consultant and locomotive gas-turbine researcher who switched to solar energy in 1955; co-developed Harold…
Son of Steve and Holly Baer. Estate executor following Steve Baer's death on May 17, 2024. Solar Fools member; land manager at Naturion and owner of Oso Ag, LLC.
Karen Terry is a Santa Fe–based builder and contractor, best known for her own 1974 passive solar house in Santa Fe — the second passive solar house built in New Mexico and one of …
Keith Haggard — New Mexico passive solar designer and organizer; principal founder (1972) and first executive director of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association, co-founded with P…
Kenneth L. Haggard (b. 1935) — Cal Poly San Luis Obispo architecture professor (1967-1988) and passive solar architect. HUD-funded researcher on the Atascadero Skytherm roof-pond p…
Lloyd Kahn is a builder, writer, and publisher — an ex-San Francisco insurance broker turned Big Sur carpenter whose encounter with Steve Baer's Dome Cookbook in early 1968 seeded …
Santa Fe architect (Solar Design and Analysis). Education: architecture and environmental design, University of Oklahoma. 150+ efficient homes since 1975. ASES Passive Solar Pionee…
Director at Zomeworks Corporation per LinkedIn. Prior roles at Elliston Development Inc., Carrizo Solar Corp., and Grant Thornton LLP; MBA from the University of Chicago. Also cred…
Michael E. Reynolds (b. 1945), architect and founder of Earthship Biotecture in Taos, New Mexico. Developed the Earthship — a sustainable, thermal-mass, off-grid building type usin…
Nick Pine (Villanova University) is a solar-DIY correspondent who, in a July 1995 Usenet post, transcribed and preserved extensive passages of Steve Baer's Sunspots air-loop rock-s…
Oscar Tuazon is a California-based artist working in architecture, installation, and sustainability. His Water School exhibition (MSU Broad Museum, 2019) placed Steve Baer explicit…
Paul Hildebrandt is the founder and CEO of Zometool Inc., an educational geometry toy company that commercialized Steve Baer's 31-zone zonohedra system. He has devoted 45 years to …
Commune name of Peter Douthit (1936-2012). Drop City member (1966-1968); co-founder of the Libre commune in Colorado; author of Drop City (Olympia Press, 1971); later co-founder of…
Writer and solar pioneer (1908/09-1983) based in New Mexico. Former American Rocket Society researcher and Decentralist-movement essayist who built early solar houses in El Rito an…
Architect who co-founded a passive-solar practice with Ken Haggard at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1976 (later the San Luis Sustainability Group). Cal Poly Architecture faculty 1974…
Researcher who by 1961 had built and tested a nocturnal-radiation cooling system at an Arizona house — a 280 ft² black cloth radiator storing 120,000 BTU of 'cold' in a 10-ton buri…
Passive solar experimenter who directly influenced Zomeworks' di-thermal wall development. Baer names him in the Cool Cell brochure's "Past Work" section (2002) alongside Harold Ha…
Steve Baer (born October 13, 1938, Los Angeles; died May 17, 2024, age 85) was an engineer, inventor, and writer based in Corrales and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and co-founder of Zo…
Counterculture artist of USCO and the Lama Foundation. Co-coined the word "zome" with Steve Baer.
Stewart Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (fall 1968) and the central broker between the counterculture commune movement and the Bay Area computer research establishm…
Zomeworks employee who installed the Double Play thermosiphon system at Bruce W. Davis's Albuquerque studio in 2004 — plumbing 42 vertical 4-inch PVC drain pipes holding 200 gallon…
Inventor and founder of One Design Inc. Developed rotationally-molded water-wall modules for passive heating and cooling starting in 1974, evolving over four generations. Baer name…
Harvard physicist who independently tracked passive solar developments for decades. Author of Super Solar Houses (1983) — the book through which Norman Saunders' overhead heat/cool…
William Thomas Lumpkins (1909-2000) — New Mexico architect, painter, and pioneer of passive solar adobe construction. Built first passive solar house in 1935 (Capitan, NM), called …
Japanese engineer who in 1958 proposed combining solar energy, nocturnal radiation cooling, radiant panels, and a heat pump into a complete year-round air-conditioning system — the…
Co-founder (with Pliny Fisk III) of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (1975) and its first co-director. Wellesley- and Penn-trained architect who worked in Louis Ka…
Co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems and the policy half of its leadership: proposed the framework for Austin's Green Builder Program (the world's first…
Co-founder and co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (Austin, 1975). Penn-trained under Ian McHarg and Russell Ackoff; put Steve Baer on his first UT-Aus…
Sculptor and philanthropist (1890–1984). Heir to a Kidder, Peabody & Company founder. Funded three experimental houses by Eleanor Raymond on her Dover, Massachusetts estate, includ…
Physicist, chemist, and inventor (living, Tijeras NM). Worked at Zomeworks with Steve Baer in the early 1970s; taught at MIT; co-invented the first Low-E coating for glass; invente…
Geometric abstractionist painter (b. 1933) who co-founded Park Place Gallery in New York and the Libre commune in Colorado, building a 40-foot geodesic dome studio. Often misidenti…
Mechanical engineer (1912–2007) who joined Frank Bridgers in September 1951 to form Bridgers & Paxton. Co-engineer of the 1956 Albuquerque Solar Building, the world's first commerc…
Pioneering American architect (1887-1989) whose 60+ year career included experimental material houses and the 1948 Dover Sun House, the first solar-heated residence. FAIA 1961.
Mechanical engineer (1922–2005) who founded the first independent mechanical consulting engineering firm in New Mexico (May 1951) and co-engineered the world's first commercial sol…
MIT chemical engineer (1903-1998) who chaired MIT Solar Energy Research for 26 years, built MIT Solar Houses I-IV, developed the Hottel-Whillier flat-plate collector model, and cla…
Nuclear physicist turned passive solar pioneer (1935-2023) who directed the LANL Solar Energy Group, led authorship of the DOE Passive Solar Design Handbook, and brought scientific…
Author of The Owner-Built Home (1972) and other self-construction guides (1927-1986) who shared Baer's DIY ethos and died when an experimental earth-sheltered dome collapsed.
Hungarian-American biophysicist and solar energy pioneer (1900-1995) who developed the Dover Sun House's Glauber's salt heat storage system, a WWII portable solar desalinator, and …
Dutch-born ecological architect (1935–2024). State Architect of California under Jerry Brown (1975–78), founder of Farallones Institute, designer of the Gregory Bateson Building (n…
Atlantic writer who quoted Baer's 'The Sun Riots' fiction in full during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests — the first known appearance of Baer's solar fiction in major national…
Architect working with Zomeworks on border and Navajo Reservation building prospects for Double Play systems, per the 2004 shareholders letter.
Author of Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace, which complements Baer's philosophy of appropriate, sustainable technology.
Poet who met Peter Rabbit at Libre, married him, and co-founded the Taos Poetry Circus with him (1982-2003).
Co-founder of the Lama Foundation in 1967, later known as Asha Greer.
SRI Augmentation Research Center figure who accompanied Doug Engelbart to the Libre commune to meet Steve Baer.
New Mexico governor whose Water Innovation Fund financed the 2006 night-sky radiant cooling potentials report.
Photographer credited for the March 1973 'Solar Energy' insert photographs of New Mexico passive solar installations in the Tribal Messenger.
Co-author with Lloyd Kahn of Shelter (1973), the global vernacular building classic sometimes called Domebook 3.
Co-author with Michael Riordan of The Solar Home Book (1976), which contextualizes Baer within the broader passive solar movement.
Co-editor of Activism in Architecture: Bright Dreams of Passive Energy Design (Routledge, 2018).
Primary organizer and contact of Solar Fools, working to bring Steve Baer's passive heating and cooling designs into production.
Author of The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling, providing updated passive solar techniques building on pioneers like Baer.
One of the developers, with Dick Henry and Baer, who brought the Skylid to its documented state.
One of the developers, with David Boyd and Baer, who brought the Skylid to its documented state.
Director of SRI's Augmentation Research Center who traveled with Bill English to New Mexico's Libre commune specifically to meet Steve Baer.
Author of How Buildings Work (Oxford, 1995), quoted in Baer's di-thermal roof materials on why ceiling radiant panels feel better than floor systems.
Author of The Passive Solar Energy Book (1979), a practical passive solar reference held in the Joule Heist collection.
Illustrator who drew the artwork for Baer's April 1973 Tribal Messenger solar energy chapter.
Co-founder of Drop City in 1965 with Clark Richert, JoAnn Bernofsky, and Richard Kallweit.
Co-author with Henri Picciotto of Zome Geometry, which expands on the mathematical principles behind Baer's structural designs.
Author of the August 1979 LBL Appropriate Energy Technology Library Bibliography (LBL-9391) that included Sunspots and Zome Primer.
Co-author with George W. Hart of Zome Geometry, on the mathematics of Baer's zonohedra-based designs.
Director of the circa-2002 Drop City documentary that features Steve Baer on camera.
Co-founder of Drop City in 1965 with Clark Richert, Gene Bernofsky, and Richard Kallweit.
Co-author with Ken Butti of A Golden Thread (1980), the mainstream institutional history of solar energy.
Albuquerque Journal staff writer who authored the August 21, 2000 article 'Cool pipes chill room naturally' about Zomeworks' Cool Cell.
Co-founder of the Lama Foundation in 1967 with Barbara and Steve Durkee.
Co-author, with Mark Chalom and Bristol Stickney, of the 2006 New Mexico night-sky radiant cooling potentials report.
Co-author with John Perlin of A Golden Thread (1980), the canonical solar history that omits Baer, Hay, and Thomason.
Co-inventor with Baer of two late Zomeworks patent applications (solar thermal tube plate heat exchanger, 2007; dual-axis high-wind solar panel support, 2010), neither granted.
Co-editor of Activism in Architecture: Bright Dreams of Passive Energy Design (Routledge, 2018), which contains Baer's chapter on Harold Hay's influence.
Architect whose 'sitting in shorts during a polar vortex' story is the model example of Passive House comfort-framed messaging.
Co-author with Bruce Anderson of The Solar Home Book (Cheshire Books, 1976).
Co-author of Design for a Limited Planet, which features Baer's early work alongside other ecological designers.
Of Design Industries, Albuquerque; made the 6-zone aluminum joint used in Baer's zome hardware.
Proposer of the orbital solar-power satellite (funded by a $200,000 AD Little grant) that Baer critiqued in his 1973 Tribal Messenger chapter.
Spiritual teacher (Richard Alpert) who stayed at the Lama Foundation in 1970, where the community produced the manuscript that became Be Here Now.
Co-founder of Drop City in 1965 alongside Clark Richert and the Bernofskys.
Collaborator who ran the February 1974 reflector tests with Baer showing skylight reflectors increase heat gain by more than 30%.