Architect and underground building pioneer died this week, at the age of 83.

Malcolm Wells was an inspiration to many young Architects in the early days on the sustainable buildings movement. With his passion for passive design, ecological integration ,and tucking buildings below the earth, he invited us to imagine a "gentle architecture".

Wells once said, “A building should consume its own waste, maintain itself, match nature's pace, provide wildlife habitat, moderate climate and weather, and be beautiful.”

Wells also developed one of the first green building rating systems. Decades before LEED^TM, he established a matrix to assess whether a building enhances or detracts from the natural environment. Malcolm Wells' checklist can be found, in many languages, on http://www.sbse.org/resources/index.htm