The project was conceived and designed in 1991 and completed in 1995 with a great out-pouring of donations of new, used, and recycled materials and labor. The building origin was a garage on the existing site that was used as the building core with the additional space added around the perimeter. The structure was designed to be passive solar with a large area of southern exposed windows and a superinsulated envelope.
Operable windows provide natural ventilation.
Emphasis was put on daylight and light sensitive design in order to minimize the use of the efficient electric fixtures. The building systems consist of rebuilt solar thermal collectors for direct heating of the floor slab and water. In the summer, space heating is not required so the heat is redirected to a seasional earth storage system for retrieval in the winter. The heat is stored below grade up to 20 feet beyond the footers. The sun space acts as the passive solar element with thermal storage in the floor slab.