Helmut Ziehe, Founder International Institute Bau-biologie & Ecology was originally an architect who had an ah-ha moment while on the job in Libya. His Building Biology calling as it were, began after an “aha” experience in North Africa in 1980 that changed the course of his life and career. He was the resident engineer for an new city of 90,000 inhabitants. It was a nice design, but the building materials were wrong! Concrete was the basic material. They had sand in abundance, and everything else had to be imported.
The local committee and town designers in Athens were unwilling to accept the truths in his observations about the genius of the indigenous architecture and the short-comings of the modern buildings that was being pushed on these people. This eye-opening experience led him to forsake his education and his career as a modern architect and to embrace the precepts of Bau-biologie.
The entire project was stopped in 1983 and Helmut was out of a job. He decided there and then not to return to an architect office. He decided to continue Baubiologie
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