Martin Hammer
Martin Hammer is an architect in Berkeley, California. He has designed over 160 residential, commercial, and institutional projects, and has participated in numerous building forensic investigations. Hammer has been active in the development of building codes for sustainable building materials and systems since 2001 and has been involved with the design, testing, engineering, and construction of straw bale buildings since 1995. He also has experience with rammed earth, passive solar, photo-voltaics, rainwater catchment, greywater, and other sustainable building practices.
He is a contributing author of the book Design of Straw Bale Buildings, and is co-authoring a straw bale building tutorial for seismically active areas of the developing world for the World Housing Encyclopedia.
In 2006 and 2007, Hammer helped introduce straw bale construction to earthquake-affected Pakistan with the organization Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building. Hammer also traveled to Haiti in March 2010 with a reconnaissance team from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and doing historic preservation assessment of the Gingerbread District in Port-au-Prince with a team from the World Monuments Fund. He is currently working on many facets of sustainable reconstruction with Builders Without Borders in Haiti.
Related Resources from Martin Hammer
Haiti Gingerbread Reconnaissance
June 2010
PowerPoint Presentations from the 2010 Natural Hazards Workshop
After the Earthquake: Overview of Building Performance and Reconstruction Strategies in Haiti
Martin Hammer (Large file, available on request)