Green Markets
Healthy Choices
Douglas McDowell calls himself a guinea pig for products most people won't touch anymore. He's worked construction for his entire adult life and is still passionate about it, but he looks back aghast at the days when he'd come home covered in asbestos or lead paint. “I just assumed the burning skin and eyes were a part of the business,” he says. Read more
Seeking Green
Seeking Green
Like many of his builder peers, Branson Fustes arrived at the custom home business in a roundabout way. The Houston-area native majored in environmental biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, studying ecosystems and wildlife habitats. He spent 10 years living in the Boulder area, working as a furniture and cabinet maker and then as a carpenter. When his parents relocated to the Austin, Texas, area in 1998, he moved there to build their house. “It gave me the opportunity to learn by doing,” he says. Read more
Sustainable Effort
Sustainable Effort
This may be the moment that Peter Taggart has waited for. Committed to sustainable building practices since long before green became everyone's new favorite color, the Freeport, Maine, builder toiled for years in relative obscurity. Since founding Taggart Construction in the early 1990s, he has refined his building methods, serving the limited market for energy-efficient, resource-conserving, healthy custom homes. Read more