#steve-baer

Steve Baer's 1974 CoEvolution Quarterly article surveying gravity-driven heat engines and presenting his own regenerator-based 'diving engine' — a Stirling/Ericsson-adjacent design…

Spring 1969 gathering organized by Barry Hickman with Steve and Holly Baer (location given as Alamogordo by Baer, disputed as Coyote/Gardner, Colorado by other sources) that direct…

First 'Life Technic' conference, hosted by Baer at Ghost Ranch in 1972, the same year and place NMSEA was founded.

Washington DC meeting where Alcoa and Texas Instruments sat at the table while Harry Thomason was kept in the audience — evidence for Baer's argument about industry capture of gove…

Three-day fall 1969 gathering in the woods near Santa Barbara, organized by ARC member Dave Evans, at which Zomeworks participated alongside SRI and other countercultural and resea…

Newspaper that ran the August 21, 2000 article 'Cool pipes chill room naturally', the earliest known mainstream press coverage of the Cool Cell in the archive.

Professional body whose Albuquerque chapter hosted Baer's 2009 slideshow surveying New Mexico passive solar buildings from 1968 to 2009.

College Baer attended intermittently (leaving in 1957 and again after conflict); his memorial was co-written by his son Jose for a 50th-reunion context.

Magazine that published the December 2020 in-depth article on Harold Hay, Skytherm, and the quest for passive cooling.

Firm (Holtz) that authored the USAF Passive Solar Handbook volumes for the Air Force Engineering Directorate circa 1985.

North Carolina experimental college where Peter Rabbit worked the garden and greenhouse to audit classes taught by Charles Olson and Buckminster Fuller.

Albuquerque mechanical consulting engineering firm founded in 1951 that engineered the 1956 Solar Building, the documented predecessor to the Baer House in New Mexico's passive-sol…

Publisher of the 1979 second edition of Baer's Sunspots, subtitled 'An Exploration of Solar Energy Through Fact and Fiction'.

Whole Earth-lineage periodical that published Baer's 'Gravity Engines and the Diving Engine' in Summer 1974.

Local Corrales newspaper that published Baer's July 2000 irrigation column and his June 2024 obituary.

Counterculture commune near Trinidad, Colorado where Baer built what he called the first convective air loop rock storage system that worked (1967-68), documented in the Dome Cookb…

Maker of the unglazed selective-surface stainless steel absorber Baer tested on his shower system and used in the Zomeworks container prototype schematic.

Swiss technical university where Baer studied engineering and metal welding after his US Army service in Germany.

Publication whose 2006 forum thread provides the archive's only long-term real-world Beadwall performance data, from a 1983 superinsulated home.

Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology, which published Kayatekin's 2025 paper on Steve Baer and the double-play thermosiphon.

Intentional interfaith spiritual community near San Cristobal, New Mexico, founded 1967, whose 'cookbook fund' published Baer's Dome Cookbook and whose first structure was a Baer-d…

Federal lab whose 1979 DOE-funded Appropriate Energy Technology library bibliography placed Sunspots and Zome Primer among core references — the earliest federal institutional endo…

Commune in Gardner, Colorado (Huerfano Valley) co-founded in 1968 by Peter Rabbit and Dean Fleming, described as the oldest continuously operating hippie commune in the country; En…

Magazine whose feature on the Dover Sun House staying warm all winter without a furnace drove the house's massive public enthusiasm.

National lab that produced the DOE Passive Solar Design Handbook (Balcomb et al., 1980-84), the definitive technical reference for passive solar design.

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, which exhibited Drop City material in 'West of Center' (2011), hosts Richert's permanent Riemannian Tangencies installation, and mounted his 2019…

Institution whose solar house program (1939-1962) belongs to the institutional solar tradition covered by the canonical histories that excluded Baer.

Magazine that profiled Harold Hay, published a 1974 Beadwall article, and ran the 1970s 'Living Off the Grid with Steve Baer' feature documenting Baer's Zomeworks compound.

Federal renewable energy lab in Golden, Colorado listed as a source of technical assessment, documentation funding, and grant partnerships for Baer House preservation.

501(c)(3) solar-education nonprofit and New Mexico ASES chapter co-founded by Steve Baer, Peter Van Dresser, and Ken Haggard at Ghost Ranch in 1972; publishes the SunPaper newslett…

Lloyd Kahn's publishing company, still active alongside his Substack as of 2025.

Scholarly society whose peer-reviewed SAH Archipedia entry documents the Baer House and places it in New Mexico's passive-solar architectural lineage.

Network of New Mexico passive solar practitioners including Bruce W. Davis and Karen Terry, keeper of a reading list and the Solar Fool library, and the most proximate steward cand…

Publication where Alexis Madrigal wrote about Baer's Sun Riots fiction during Occupy Wall Street in 2011.

Commune newsletter that serialized Baer's informal first-draft solar book across eight issues from March to October 1973, teaching solar physics through junkyards and everyday obje…

Albuquerque university whose School of Architecture and Planning is identified as the strongest academic candidate to acquire the Baer House as a field research station.

Military branch whose circa-1985 Passive Solar Handbook defined passive cooling as air-based ventilation only, omitting Hay, Baer, Zomeworks, and water-based night-sky cooling acro…

University affiliation of Usenet solar correspondent Nick Pine in the mid-1990s.

Company co-founded by Steve Baer in 1969 that developed and sold the DrumWall, Skylid, Sunbender, battery cabinets, Cool Cell, and Double Play, and passed to Benjamin Rodefer's sol…

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…

Author of Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace, which complements Baer's philosophy of appropriate, sustainable technology.

SRI Augmentation Research Center figure who accompanied Doug Engelbart to the Libre commune to meet Steve Baer.

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.

Primary organizer and contact of Solar Fools, working to bring Steve Baer's passive heating and cooling designs into production.

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.

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.

Author of the August 1979 LBL Appropriate Energy Technology Library Bibliography (LBL-9391) that included Sunspots and Zome Primer.

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…

Director of the circa-2002 Drop City documentary that features Steve Baer on camera.

Co-author with John Perlin of A Golden Thread (1980), the canonical solar history that omits Baer, Hay, and Thomason.

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.

Co-author with Bruce Anderson of The Solar Home Book (Cheshire Books, 1976).

New Mexico city home to Bruce Davis's practice, the AIA chapter Baer addressed in 2009, and the 1956 Bridgers & Paxton solar-heated office building.

Harold Hay's full-scale 1,100 sq ft Skytherm roof-pond house built 1973 in Atascadero, California, which operated for roughly 40 years and was later donated to Cal Poly.

Steve Baer's cluster of connected zomes in Corrales, New Mexico, built beginning in 1971 as the first full-scale testbed for DrumWall, Skylid, and Sunbender, still passively heatin…

New Mexico town where Steve Baer built his zome house in 1971-72 and where the Baer family and Benjamin Rodefer grew up; a center of 1970s passive solar interest.

New Mexico village where Peter Van Dresser relocated in 1949, ran a small restaurant, and built solar- and wind-powered houses.

Northern New Mexico site where NMSEA was co-founded in 1972, where the first Life Technic conference was held, and where the Sun-dwellings project was built; Van Dresser is buried …

Albuquerque school with a 1973 Dave Harrison/Zomeworks greenhouse; its Beadwall greenhouse is photographed in Sunspots.

Corrales house (1972) with a convective air-loop rock-storage system, part of the air-based storage lineage Baer began at Drop City.

New Mexico city where Van Dresser built a refined solar adobe house near Canyon Road around 1956, later called 'the first solar house west of the Mississippi'.

Bridgers & Paxton's 1956 office headquarters at 213 Truman St. SE, Albuquerque, widely called the world's first solar-heated commercial office building, now on the National Registe…

New Mexico town that is home to Earthship Biotecture and was the center of Peter Rabbit's later poetry career.

Books, articles and other media about passive cooling and heating and related subjects.

Clément Gaillard's French anthology (T&P Work Unit) containing first French translations of two otherwise uncatalogued Baer essays, 'Basic Technologies' and 'The Paradox of the Clo…

Movable-insulation invention (US Patent 3,903,665, Harrison, filed 1973) that blows polystyrene beads between window panes, covered by Mother Earth News in 1974.

Baer's June 2000 provocation essay arguing against the efficiency argument and the environmental advocacy apparatus of foundations like Rockefeller, MacArthur, and Pew.

Baer's January 2004 essay observing that Earth is about 3.5% closer to the sun in early January, making winter sunlight roughly 7% stronger than aphelion values.

Zomeworks' passive climate-control system connecting ceiling water reservoirs to roof-mounted radiator/absorbers by thermosiphon, cooling buildings without electricity, refrigerant…

Steve Baer's regenerator-based gravity heat engine using buoyant divers in hot and cold liquid baths, prototyped and presented in his 1974 CoEvolution Quarterly article.

Steve Baer's 1968 staple-bound account of zonohedra mathematics and car-top dome building, published by the Lama Foundation, which influenced the first Whole Earth Catalog and Lloy…

Lloyd Kahn's 1971 dome book (160,000 copies) that he pulled from print after concluding domes did not work as homes.

Lloyd Kahn's 1970 dome-building book, produced with Bob Easton using tools loaned by Stewart Brand.

Lloyd Kahn's Domebook One (1970) and Domebook 2 (1971), which extended the Dome Cookbook's format influence into mainstream publishing before Kahn concluded domes did not work as h…

Zomeworks' thermosiphon-based passive heating/cooling product line — the subject of Baer's 2004 shareholder pitch, Davis's studio installation, the Los Ranchos container proposal, …

Steve Baer's original passive solar heat storage invention: a south-facing wall of water-filled drums behind glazing that absorbs solar heat by day and radiates it into the room ov…

Circa-1968 publication by the Lama Foundation cookbook fund, confirmed published and listed on the Dome Cookbook cover but not in the archive.

Baer's Summer 1974 Coevolution Quarterly article (pp. 80-87) on gravity engines and the low-temperature diving engine.

Ed Allen's 1995 Oxford book, quoted in Baer's di-thermal roof materials on why ceiling radiant systems feel better than floor systems.

The curator's 80-item physical book collection (Libib export, 2026), holding many of the reading list's key solar titles including both Sunspots printings.

Hannah R. Clark's August 1979 DOE-funded bibliography (LBL-9391) that included Sunspots and Zome Primer, the earliest federal institutional endorsement of Baer's work.

1970s Mother Earth News article documenting Baer's practical implementations at his Zomeworks compound, a priority pending ingest.

Baer's 2012 follow-up volume to Sunspots, published by Zomeworks; only the cover has been ingested into the archive so far.

Baer's 2002 essay arguing that surfaces, not air, do the real work of nighttime cooling by radiating heat directly to space — the foundational text for the archive's thermal vision…

Book co-authored by Ken Haggard and David Bainbridge on heating, cooling, ventilation, and daylighting using natural flows.

Zomeworks' insulated skylight louver (US Patent 3,884,414) that opens and closes by itself via refrigerant-canister weight shifts, with no electricity, thermostat, or motor.

Zomeworks' unglazed collector panel product, used by Bruce Davis in Double Play installations and cited in Baer's 2003 unglazed collectors article for delivering warm showers throu…

Harold Hay's roof-pond passive heating and cooling system — water bags on flat roofs under movable insulation — demonstrated in Phoenix (1967) and Atascadero (1973) and cited as in…

Circa-1968 cookbook-fund poster in the curator's possession pending scan; if 'Sol' means solar it would be Baer's earliest solar publication, predating Sunspots by about seven year…

Stewart Brand's December 7, 1972 Rolling Stone article on countercultural computing that quotes Baer as 'dome and solar designer Steve Baer from dusty Albuquerque'.

Kayatekin's 2025 ICON paper — the first academic work to establish the Baer House and Zomeworks in international scholarship, calling the thermosiphon Baer's broadly overlooked cen…

Baer's patented closed-loop convective device (US 3,618,569) that keeps an ice hole open for livestock — the conceptual seed of the double-play thermosiphon lineage.

Zomeworks' mirrored reflector and shade panel system that directs winter sun into south-facing collectors and shades them in summer, developed through four patents.

Steve Baer's May 2004 manifesto imagining the practice of 'sun work' — outdoor, tool- and measurement-based solar work opposed to subsidies, certifications, and contrived celebrati…

Baer's July 2000 four-page dark satire imagining the rational project of eliminating clouds and weather to achieve permanent, commodified sunshine.

NMSEA's newsletter, a recurring venue for Baer's late-career writing including the unglazed-collectors article (March/April 2003) and the thermosiphon shower field test.

Bainbridge and the Steens' work on straw bale building materials, complementing passive solar approaches with sustainable low-cost construction.

One of Baer's absurdist Sunspots fiction pieces, revisited by Alexis Madrigal in The Atlantic during Occupy Wall Street.

The 2002 Passive Heating and Cooling System patent held by Zomeworks — the Cool Cell architectural system patent underpinning the Double Play.

Stewart Brand's countercultural reference catalog (first published fall 1968) whose format was directly influenced by Baer's Dome Cookbook and which listed that book in its first e…

Baer's zonohedra-derived structural system (US Patent 3,722,153), fusing 'zone' and 'dome' — simple in structure, complicated in shape, and the form behind Zomeworks' name and the …

Hart and Picciotto's work expanding the mathematical principles of Baer's structural designs, intersecting with Zometool.

1970 Zomeworks publication explaining zome structures, opening with the explicit comparison of zomes to Fuller's geodesic domes.

Commercial 31-zone ball-and-strut construction system developed by Paul Hildebrandt from Steve Baer's geometry; Jose Baer considers it possibly his father's most significant work.