Healthy Home Revolution
As a society we are learning, slowly but surely, how to design and build healthy indoor spaces for ourselves and our loved ones. Seeing the need to both guide and accelerate this learning process, Paula Baker LaPorte and her wingman John Banta and Erica Elliot MD dedicated themselves to write a book. This happened 35 years ago with the 1st Edition of Prescriptions for a Healthy Homes, last year (in 2022) the 4th Edition was published and it is a richly updated treasure trove of motivation, guidance and actionable information that we all need to know more about. What we need now is a step change of sorts in the way society thinks about and delivers housing to itself. We need a Healthy Home Revolution.
With that in mind, Kristof sat down with Paula to have a conversation about her journey exploring and understanding the connection between the built environment and our health. After hearing her stories and absorbing the understanding and knowledge in her book, it is clear that homes can be so much more than we currently ask them to be. Homes are more than a visual-spatial-economic situation, more than a place to hold ourselves, our families and our stuff, more than an exercise in energy efficiency and resource use; The places we live are in truth highly immersive and tactile experiences for our bodies and minds, and profoundly impactful opportunities to promote our health and the health of the planet.
Paula Baker-Laporte
Paula is an architect and Building Biologist living in Ashland, Oregon. She specializes in health-enhancing and ecologically sound architectural design and consulting and has extensive experience applying the principles of Building Biology to many forms of alternative construction including: Light straw-clay adobe, straw-bale, pumice-crete, aerated autoclaved concrete and wood insulated concrete forms. In her role as architect or consultant she has successfully assisted many people suffering from MCS in building healthy homes since 1995. She is the primary author “Prescriptions for A Healthy House,” co-author with husband Robert Laporte of two books: “Econest,” and “The EcoNest Home,” and contributing author to several other publications.