Derek T. Havens & Associates

08/26/2026

Simple yet unique and beautiful perspective…. Very nice, simple and beautiful details. Thoughtful…

08/24/2026

More passive approaches to architecture that can and does save operational costs and increases comfort levels on a permanent basis without the use of outside power. Passive design is as old as dwellings and borne from simple environmental realities and observational physics. We must break away from this “money buys everything” commodified status quo that focuses more on how to charge than appropriate results.
Passive design breaks the “subscription” model of all things being at the cost of a monthly bill. This is entirely the results of seeking constant profits rather than final solutions or approaches that simply make sense and function without attention.
So long as an ongoing profit margin growth dominates all of corporate thinking, planning and marketing along with the ‘normalization’ of outsourcing just about everything, we remain prisoners of bad design and forced use of onerous mechanizations that serve only to deliver a monthly payment rather than solve any real challenges.
So often “solutions” to our perceived challenges are postured to be obtained through payments…hopefully, on the part of producers, payments that never end, even when the product becomes its own challenge and “solutions” become about addressing the problems introduced by the first application of perpetual debt.
There are simple solutions…permanent solutions available to us today as they have been for centuries, that can actually help us today, in real time with positive results.
Don’t allow ‘normal’ to dominate your imagination or creativity…give historical perspective an opportunity to color your designs with practical and rational solutions rather than simply another listing on the stock market as we feed the machine.

08/22/2026

Passive design at its best.

08/16/2026

Many of the challenges met in the struggle of keeping nature out of our dwellings can work counter to desired impacts and results. As I have mentioned many times before, we have been around, building structures for many thousands of years. I only find it rational that our ancestors did not hunker in the dust until the dawn of concrete and, through simple trial and error at dealing with the mundane, persistent challenges of living upon the Earth that humans have experienced on a daily basis for quite some time.
The evolution of floors is fascinating although, as it literally lies beneath our notice, has gone from functionally practical systemic and solution-based design/build to ‘surface treatment’, merely an aesthetic backdrop for whatever imagined, romantic vision someone may have about where they live…in order to make it appear as anywhere but where it is.
No longer do the visuals match the materials in any rational manner. Most faux materials simply sacrifice all that is the essence and purposes of authentic materials in favor of visuals; no longer relying on an active, system which requires regular maintenance.
Oddly, we seem to skip the potential contributions of modern technologies and materials in ways that might lessen any onerous maintenance rather than completely substituting something for only its surface performance.
In parts of Africa where cattle are raised in fairly arid conditions and also are considered the ‘estate’ of a family, homes are erected of mud bricks that function as thermal masses to gather warmth during the day that slowly releases into the space as it cools overnight from the outside in.
Floors are often cow manure, spread out evenly and then burnished and packed with smooth round stones to produce a solid, hard surfaced floor with the look of jade.
Periodically, a new layer is added and smoothed. The smoothing actually seals the packed manure from any aromatics.
The floors are made of cow s**t and hold up for decades, if not longer.
Hempcrete blocks; a mixture of h**p silage, lime and water molded into structural blocks. These blocks are waterproof, naturally insulate far beyond what would typically be added to such a wall thickness, fireproof, paintable, stainable (desired colors) and, depending on use of structure, can be build without foundations. One might imagine that this material would be well-suited to rebuilding in fire-destroyed areas where the typical stacks of firewood perished. What would you think keeps such material from the mainstreams of construction?
Once more, in offering this posting, my purpose is not to suggest that we immediately go out and cover our kitchen floors with cow s**t, but to bring our awareness, as designers and builders, the foundations of our crafts and trades and what specific problems they found solutions to in how and with what we build.
Are they the same physical challenges or are they now only aesthetic choices, T.B.D., by the home-owner….a form of solid paint? Or are there existing materials that can be safely and environmentally sound in their production and use that can accomplish the same thing for pennies?
Our current approach is, of course, dominated by cost implications without much thought into any sort of natural physics that might be employed as much less cost with as much efficacy. Our buildings are entirely determined by the cost of construction. Not that this was ever not the case, in one way or another, but the “cost” were determined in the performance rather in the profits made building it.
We have seen a lot of advancement in insulation materials and, in so doing, rediscovered many ancient approaches that had purpose in their design and use. There are so many more environmentally neutral products now available that employ older, existing technologies and newer marketing techniques.
To minimize the cost of “thinking”, contemporary building seeks to minimize the opportunity for such to occur outside of the plans and specified materials. Completely understandable, but also sorely lacking in encouraging thinking about why we do what we do with what we do.
Are we building as merely cogs in an economic engine of our times; unquestioningly assembling tab A into slot B? That is emphatically what works for those who are involved in the constant financial struggles of the building industries whose focus is short on meaning and intent that might cause someone to “wonder” on the job and long on “Time is money” wherein one wastes no time in understanding the basic principles of what they are building or why they are using the materials and techniques they are given.
Unions, as bastions of skilled trades, require certain familiarity with the purposes of their skills and how they developed as a part of their journeymen training programs. This produced some of the greatest trades people on Earth as they owned an understanding of what they were doing and why they would do it that way.
Plumbers still have to know more about plumbing than glueing plastic together, but someone who can glue plastic together can fake being a plumber….Glueing, in this case, is not a master class in building courses and, as they say on the job, “Anyone can do that!”.
We became so adept at sealing ourselves away from nature that it has required manufacturing our own interior environments to handle the ‘terrariums’ we call homes. Little controlled atmospheres where we feel safely away from the harms present in nature. Safety under “control” of the uncontrollable.
Earlier home designs and building principles and techniques looked at the entire process of building as something a bit different in that they where seeking ways to live within nature’s capricious expressions through thoughtful design and experiences gained through trial and error over centuries that accommodated and worked with these powerful forces of nature as components to be understood and their strengths employed to our advantages through our clever manipulations; because heaven knows we cannot sit still and live in a reality where something can always be made “better”.
Sealing ourselves completely away from nature is a relatively new concept for humans in how we live and, I feel, a direction that has taken us further and further away from the understanding of our presence as a part of nature rather than perceiving nature as merely an imposition that requires “taming” using sophisticated technology and petro-chemicals. Silly humans.
What profound hubris to take the essence of our sense of well-being, having a home, and turning it into a cut-throat economic chaos that exists completely uncoupled from our experiences as humans as a part of nature, already in progress.
Intellectual curiosity is far more lucrative than the goal of wealth acquisition. Not that there’s anything wrong with gaining wealth but, perhaps, we might question the motivations, understandings and impacts of our impulsivity to become wealthy enough to escape all imagined threats from nature…..including ourselves and others.

08/15/2026

I very much support earth-bermed structures for their energy conservation and low-profile presentation that works in concert with the existing topography and like spiral or circular planning that negates any cul de sacs in interior space aside from sleeping quarters (and even then, I like having a circular traffic pattern throughout a living space.
But then there are clearly those with more traditional perspectives on dwelling spaces and those that prefer more organic aspects to their designs.

08/11/2026

Since my design forays into the ‘emerging’ (re-discovery) sciences of passive design and building in the late ‘70s, I became fascinated with historical and cultural passive designs that coexisted with the location. Every culture, from every latitude, has accomplished some common knowledge techniques that provide habitable shelters through the use of passive design.
Obviously, this is not new information or knowledge. Quite the contrary most of the most basic, practical and functional passive designs are ancient, arising from the basic needs of survival as applied curiosity and ingenuity.
Wherever humans live, and we all know that humans infest most all areas of our planet’s surface, humans have taken whatever humble resources are at hand and “made do”, slowly learning and remembering more successful ways to do some things. Living in groups, this spontaneous refinement of tools and techniques are quickly shared, adding more mind-power to solving a single challenge through many trial and errors.
Selling passive architecture to the American public in the ‘80s was difficult. The trends in architectural styles became more and more respondent to the financial priorities of developers and sellers, all focused upon the short term returns. Once an area settled for a development style, building became more focused on appearances and “curb appeal” rather than more substantive aspects of building homes.
My former business partner, David Johnston, went on to pursue such new and “green” building practices and materials, writing several books on the subject and worked tirelessly with building associations in attempts to educate and encourage the adoption of a more sustainable approach to building and, subsequently, living.
Builders become captive of precedents quickly, not wanting to make such decisions but preferring to focus on the project.
It can be hard to introduce change, even proven positive changes, when they buck the established “Way we’ve always done it!”
I think we are now seeing a resurgence, perhaps, for more rational thinking about how we live and why we live as we do.
The energy concerns alone and, of course, the financial burdens of energy resources, are prompting some in many parts of the world to begin returning, in concept and intention, to the roots of their original architectural adaptations to their specific areas.
To learn more about the evolution of architectural design and our subsequent adaptive lifestyles, the interactive influences in our social developments and behaviors, I highly recommend:

Home: A Short History of an Idea
By Witold Rybczynski

We focus far more on the specifics than the generalized thinking that motivates our design actions, becoming all too soon, mired in the bogs of contemporary constraints by the chains of the incurious and those that only see the cost without ever understanding the values in following our ancestor’s leads in the generic ways that benefit all of our thinking about how and where we call home.

08/11/2026

Brutalism has a certain ‘budgetary’ restraint about it and is used in many municipal applications in hopes of producing something neutral and, of course, inexpensive. Yet it is difficult to argue with the aesthetic enhancement of proportional and balanced details in these structures. Brutalism + Whimsy and sense of geometry.
What, exactly, is the cost of imagination that can take a plain brick to an interesting and dynamic texture to an exterior? When proportional to the larger faces and masses of most Brutalism, I think textured surfaces will read as a solid mass, still, holding true to the basic intentions of a structure.

07/29/2026

This is why we cannot have the things we can imagine. Profit controls what, how and why we pursue certain ventures. I have a friend who once remarked, “Why would anyone do anything without profit?”. This remark has rattled around in my head for years and, I feel, indicative of our misguided perceptions of who and what we are.
Everything in our contemporary existence is fundamentally a sliding board towards wealth; the implied and most often adopted location for most of our natural curiosity.
The commodification of everything has only served to breed a caliber of character that exists only to take advantage or what is rather than produce anything new; feeling that life is a series of actions designed to exploit the existing resources without adding or replacing anything to the whole.
The planet is in the throes of experiencing our just desserts given our thoughtless actions over the past 600 years and we have the temerity to be ‘surprised’ by our current reality as if none of this was foreseeable. We find ourselves wallowing in professions of our own victimhood, immediately responding by assigning blame rather than owning the circumstances of our own making.
This is why we currently are confused as to how to save ourselves from the grips of this now rogue juggernaut economy. Our present is predicated upon an assumed ethos that wealth plays in our society where most everything requires evaluation from that perspective.
The real trickle-down reality is that of thought and ideas. New, creative thinking and the ideas they produce are what shift societies and civilizations.
Our real reality is that we are among the most impactful creatures upon the planet, there are a lot of us and, we have no real plan other than “more, better, faster and harder” and apparently to pro-create at astounding levels around the globe; mostly in the innate sense of impending doom that encourages all life to flourish as a defense….We represent a panic response by a species that has designed a maelstrom of complexity that we now are all succumbing to; pulled down by the inexorable spiral of instability built-in to our process of acquiring monetary wealth as the final escape from the more common, mundane life of living a real life, and in the process, forgetting what life was really about in the first place.
But how does this impact ‘me’ and my plans for the weekend? Why should I consider alternatives that involve changing all the patterns I am, perhaps, just now, beginning to understand how to play? The pressure of the accumulated weight of our previous decisions will force our hands. Our current events are that which will force our hands.
We have had so many opportunities to take a different road, guided by different values and ethical concerns as priorities that now are leaving us bereft of comfort or predictability. Now, our uncertainty about the future and what is in store is lost in the impenetrable forest of the trees we have planted.
All along, our planet has offered everything that we need to exist comfortably and at peace with one another, yet, due to our self-indulgence and myopic greed, have not only refused to explore, but actively thwart others from doing so to protect their profits through corrupt business and governmental practices. It would seem that our financial opportunities have become our liabilities due to poor practices and intentions. Think of this as we close in on one of our few opportunities to find some solidarity in finding a better way for all humans to consider our lives….vote.

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03/28/2026