Helmut Ernst Hermann Ziehe was born in Waltersdorf, Germany, in 1937 and studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, graduating in the late 1960s. He is recorded as enrolling on the 1970-71 postgraduate programme run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Development and Tropical Studies, London, UK. He was tutored by Mario Novella and duly graduated with a postgraduate Diploma in the summer of 1971. Details of his early career are not yet known to us but by 1980 he was working for a Greek company, as the Resident Engineer for a new city development for 90,000 people, in Libya. It is at this point that he credits the experience of noticing that the majority of the inhabitants soon abandoned their new, concrete homes in favour of living in tents, as having a life and career-changing effect. He embraced the teachings of Anton Schneider, who had been researching the impact of modern building practices and materials on the health of the population during the 1960s and 70s. Zeihe was to study under Schneider in the early 1980s at Schneiders’ Institute of Building Biology and Ecology (IBN), in Neubeuern, and undertook the task of translating the entire course materials and handbooks into English. With Schneider’s blessing, Zeihe subsequently took on an evangelical role, established the International Institute for Bau-Biologie and Ecology, in London, in 1984. Three years later he transferred the Institute to the US, setting up in Clearwater, Florida, where he continued to teach, for over 30 years, on the relationship between the human-made built environment and its impact on human health. His institute (now the ‘Building Biology Institute’) continues to thrive and to pass on the concepts of ‘healthy building for sustainable living’ to a new generation of students.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register 1945-1972. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Diploma Roll Book, 1970-71. AA Archives
• Building Biology Institute. ‘Our Founder’. Building Biology Institute. Accessed 24 November 2024. https://buildingbiologyinstitute.org/about/our-founder/.
• Susannah Ziehe, correspondence with Edward Bottoms, July 18, 2024