DIRT-CHEAP HOUSES FROM ELEMENTAL MATERIALS

Every day, a growing number of apprentice home builders travel deep into the California desert for a chance to commune with Nader Khalili, an architect who is single-handedly trying to wean the world off of two-by-fours, steel, and concrete.

"We send our children into the world with the notion that a house must have a pitched roof, a square window and a chimney," Khalili says. "How can they ever imagine they can build something beautiful out of dirt?"

MAYBECK RETURNS TO OREGON

Did you ever fantasize about doing an apprenticeship under one of the great master architects? Working with direct guidance from Frank Lloyd Wright or H. H. Richardson? Now that fantasy has become more realizable: the revered California architect Bernard Maybeck has recently returned to life and, surprisingly, returned to Oregon.

In the nineteen-teens, with little notice by architectural historians, Maybeck completed a wealth of design work for the small coastal town of Brookings.