Evolve Builders Group

09/03/2026

Yesterday Polly Bart, founder of Greenbuilders, Inc., Baltimore, MD visited our office to trade notes on our respective 25 years of successes and struggles. We in turn invited our friends and occasional partners Hundred Year Materials, Anima Spaces and The Hive Design Co. to be part of the convo!

One humorous annecdote? Everyone finds it difficult to get their great people into photos. The camera comes out and the peeps scatter!

Synchronistically, we received this incredible letter of thanks - for our people - from a recent window-replacement client:

"Just a note of thanks for facilitating my window replacement project by providing access to the Worx team (and a bit of Syd and Melanie M).

The project went smoothly and the end result has exceeded expectations. The team was an absolute pleasure to work with. I really enjoyed getting to work along side so many members of the team and getting to know them.

Michel is a special individual and I can’t say enough about how he led the team by setting such a positive and professional example and found so many opportunities for mentorship and training. It is clear that while is he focused on delivering the project at hand he also has one eye on the future of the team as well … truly amazing.

Another amazing aspect was how the team also continues to embody and represented the ‘spirit’ of Evolve that I first experienced when building my house in 2010/2011. I remarked a few times to Jen how it reminded me of working with Mitch and his crew, Dan, Melanie, yourself, etc. back in the day.

Quality and high performance count - but so does the human experience - and the Evolve team continues to excel in all three areas. Just good people all around.

I’ve attached a few pictures from the project for your interest - I know how hard it is to capture pics of the team - so I tried to grab some when opportunities presented themselves and I didn’t need to worry about keeping up with Michel :).

A heartfelt thanks"

08/27/2026

Even after 27 years, we feel fresh pride every time one of our projects is selected as a feature in industry publications! Check out Haus 757, seen now across the pages of Sustainable Architecture & Building Magazine (SAB Mag)'s summer Ontario Focus issue.

In past posts, we called out some of the core subs and suppliers whose work help make this place sing. This time we note the pre-construction partners who helped write the music!

StudioVol
Blackwell
Engineering
GSP Group
GM BluePlan Engineering Limited

ontario summer 2026 digital

08/17/2026

"This is the house. This is the steeple. Open the door. See all the people."

OK, so we couldn't find another term that rhymed with "people." "Turret" would sure stall the rhythm. But for all who remember the classic hand and finger game that we are riffing off, it seems apropos --> the starting image of a DOOR...HAND-application of historic materials...and of course, the PEOPLE, too seldom seen in our posts.

It seems that as soon as a camera is spotted on site, our peeps make for dark corners or turn their faces. 😎🤫 No matter... every once in a while we still catch them in the act!!! (owners too!)

Please give them a deserved shout out here! Even though they avoid the spotlight, they need to feel the love too!

08/14/2026

Reverse chronology! (Nearly) finished strawbale house backwards to concept design!

08/14/2026

Heading into the weekend, we thought we would step back...literally and figuratively...to give you a bigger view of this grand .

What do you think about the hand-applied, wood-float finished exterior plaster? And what about its sharp cuts and lines? Who says must be like?! Our skilled team can deliver modern equally well as organic!

Keep scrolling right to view the underlying preparation - including impressive scaffold set up - where we use straw, string and mesh to form these attractive lines.

08/11/2026

Now that we have your attention with our recent posts of a real life cage match featuring Straw vs Fire (if you didn't catch these, we think you would be surprised at the real life winner!), how about a look at one of our current natural building projects for inspiration?

Here we lead with a pic of clay-lime plaster artfully hand-applied over curvilinear strawbale walls. Keep scrolling right to reach back in time as far as early design iterations produced by our in-house design team!

Keep watch as we expand future views to show this entire naturally amazing home.

PS. Many thanks to our friends at Straworks Inc. for their collab and handholding (more on that later) and to our awesome clients whose hands were also directly applied in the course of this work!!!

08/10/2026

The world is on fire (cont'd from last post).
What do strawbale walls that burned for more than a day look like?

Answer: nothing remarkable. Barely perceptible, in fact.

Here we present two interior photos of a fire that burned for more than a DAY!!!

One could reasonably expect a total catastrophic loss. Instead we experienced just minor charring!

Now we didn't avoid rework altogether - substantive water damage (some evidence of which is seen via the damp exterior in the 1st exterior pic) occurred as consequence of the fire department's extinguishing of the source. But even this was incomparable to a total fire loss.

Read the remarkable conclusion of the full story attached herein, excerpted from the current issue of The Last Straw magazine. The current journal's pages are entirely dedicated to global tales of hope, solutions, ideas and concerns regarding fire and our dangerously heating home planet. (Please consider picking up the entire issue.)

The last photos demonstrate the happy ending for these homeowners...after the charred straw was made good and water damaged materials throughout the house replaced --> An architectural gem that is also testimony to how practices can protect a family and their personal domain.

08/07/2026

The world is on fire. This statement is equally valid considered both from the figurative and literal perspectives.

What are we to do when the issue is both so massive - global climate breakdown - and yet also so local...with people we ourselves know are among those who just last month lost family properties and homes to raging fires.

Evolve's sibling business, Harvest Homes, was conceived as an act of resilience and resistance to housing norms...25 yrs after founder Ben Polley's (conventionally constructed) family home was lost to a house fire.

Did you know that strawbale walls - which Harvest Homes has crafted across Ontario for 25+ yrs - have been rated to the same fire resistance as a cement-block wall! Or that during regimented testing, flamethrowers spitting furious flames at up to 1500 deg F at plastered bale walls after 2 hours failed not only to induce combustion but the opposite face of wall rose in temperature by less than 50 deg F!! Moreover, not only do strawbale walls provide an incredible defence against fire, they also sequester biogenic carbon - helping mitigate the very climate crisis that is hyper-fueling fires the whole world over.

The Last Straw - "a magazine about natural building and alternative design for dirtbags and dreamers since 1992" has offered up its entire current issue to this matter as they "look to fire as a cause for concern, hope, and provocation."

Here we have excerpted our own contribution to the issue. In it we retell the story of fire at one of our own projects.

We'll post the conclusion next week...but if the story is just too hot to wait or you just wanna learn more about amazing people and projects in the natural building world seeking to make our planet a better place, we strongly encourage you to drop the entire 120+ pg issue from The Last Straw magazine shop.

What about you; do you have any stories to share? Comments? We want to hear from you.

07/14/2026

A team of many talents, here our Tara Sims doffs her PM hat and dons her performance cap as part of a different team: synchronized flag twirling! Just love how our peeps cm oft be found engaging in the communities we live and work!