Everything old is new again with Bark House Design: A Rustic Style Reclaimed. Resurrected from a practice begun in North Carolina in the 1800s and discontinued in the 1940s after a tragic blight from Asia, designing with bark shingles is again the epitome of sustainable design. Bark requires no toxic chemical treatments, can be harvested locally, and can live again for a century or more in the form of a premium building material, with little added energy use.
Rustic, refined, natural, organic, unique, sophisticated, timeless, long lasting-bark shingles are the material of choice for many architects, builders, and homeowners today. They appear in a breathtaking range of projects from mountain to seaside, resort lodges and inns to shopping centers, sports venues and more-and mix well with a range of other building materials, including stone, log, glass, wrought iron, copper, and more. And no matter what variety of rustic styling you prefer-Adirondack, Cowboy, Craftsman, Rustic Revival, Shingle, Modern Rustic-bark used in remodeling can act as a visually pleasing architectural tool to bridge the gaps between old and new.
Chris McCurry and her her husband, Marty McCurry, originated modern poplar bark shingle manufacturing. She is a pioneer in today's indoor-outdoor bark house design and a building industry professional. They founded Highland Craftsmen to bring a little-known building material back into general use, and now have installations of their bark in thirty-seven states and several locations overseas. She is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Chestnut Foundation, and founder of www.growthishometowngreen.org, a grass-roots effort to identify grants that can bring green development opportunities to economically distressed rural communities. Chris and Marty travel extensively in Europe, Africa, and Latin America to study how people in other parts of the world use local resources for building.
Nan Chase writes about architecture and landscape design from her home in western North Carolina. She is the author of Asheville: A History, published in 2007, and her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Fine Gardening, Architectural Record, and Southern Living. She and her husband, Saul Chase, have built a rustic bark bungalow near historic downtown Asheville, North Carolina, where she is a contributing editor of WNC Magazine.
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