Rammed Earth: Dirt is Green

When he talks about building a house out of dirt in a historic Roanoke neighborhood, architect Gregg Lewis begins to look just slightly maniacal.

Ordinarily reserved and neat, his hands begin to help him speak. The possibilities and the anticipation percolate in him, and he starts to look something like a mad scientist staring into a test tube waiting for a world-shaking chemical reaction.

The house made of dirt - it's actually an established environmentally sensitive building technique called "rammed earth" - is one part of a larger experiment Lewis, 41, has been presiding over since April 2004.

Lewis and his firm, SmithLewis Architecture, orchestrated the C2C home design competition as a means of promoting green building concepts championed by internationally known architect William McDonough in a book he co-authored, "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things." The idea is to move toward building materials and methods that will do less harm to the environment, such as solar energy and synthetic and recycled materials.