Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS)

The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (“Max’s Pot”) is an Austin, Texas 501(c)(3) founded in 1975 by Pliny Fisk III and Daria Bolton Fisk, called by USGBC founding chair Rick Fedrizzi “the oldest nonprofit dedicated to sustainable building in the U.S.” It matters to this archive as the Texas counterpart to the New Mexico scene around Steve Baer: the same early-1970s appropriate-technology milieu, connected to Baer and Peter Van Dresser by direct personal visits, citations, and conferences — but one that evolved from passive solar hardware into protocols and policy (life-cycle rating systems, green building programs) rather than staying with Baer’s hardware-first, anti-institutional path.

History

Pre-history (1971–75). Fisk joined the UT-Austin School of Architecture faculty in fall 1971 and, with Daria Bolton, founded the “Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems” in 1972 — two deliberately utility-free shacks at UT’s Balcones Research Center with bicycle-part wind generators, recycled-can solar air heaters, a methane digester, and hydroponics. Buckminster Fuller wrote approvingly to “Max’s Pot” (letter dated 1971 or 1973 — the biography gives both), and the Portola Institute’s Energy Primer (1974) called it “some of the best, if not the best, university-related work on integrating energy systems in the United States.” Fisk’s first UT course syllabus put “Steve Baer (Passive Solar Homes)” alongside McHarg, the Olgyays, Fuller, and the New Alchemists (50 Years, p.112).

Founding (1975). After a three-year grant offer from Dominique de Menil, the Lab left the university and became the nonprofit CMPBS, co-directed by Fisk and Daria Bolton Fisk, first at an earth-bermed site on Bee Caves Road, then (1978) at the present 8604 FM 969 farmstead campus in East Austin. Fisk and Bolton resigned their UT professorships in 1977 amid conflict with the new dean; UT faculty reportedly told students to avoid the “left leaning radical group” for ~20 years.

Appropriate technology era (1975–mid-80s). An Appropriate Technology Working Atlas for the State of Texas (1977) mapped indigenous materials and passive techniques statewide — its Trombe-wall entry cites Baer’s drum wall directly (see below). The Crystal City emergency response (1977–81) converted a town of 10,000 to wood stoves and $25 recycled-material solar water heaters after a gas cutoff. The Caliche Report (1979), Hill Country Youth Ranch (1977, first unfired all-caliche building in the Southwest “since the Native Americans”), and Carrizo Springs Girl Scout HQ (1980–81) developed caliche block as the non-arable-soil alternative to adobe. Carrizo Springs also used a white metal nocturnally re-radiating trickle roof coupled to slab pipes (~100 BTU/sf-night) — CMPBS’s own night-sky cooling work, contemporary with Baer’s.

Protocols and policy era (1987–2010). The Life Cycle Framework (1987) became the rating core of the Austin Green Builder Program (1990) — the world’s first green building program, the only U.S. initiative honored at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and the credited inspiration for USGBC (1993) and LEED. Later protocols: BaselineGreen/GreenBalance (EPA input-output LCA, 1998), EcoBalance (2000), and the “lenses” framework (2012). Prototypes included the Advanced Green Builder Demonstration Home (1995–97, built without virgin wood or portland cement) and two Solar Decathlons (UT 2002, Texas A&M 2007). Gail Vittori led the healthcare and urban side: Green Guide for Health Care (2002), LEED for Healthcare, Mueller, and the USGBC board chair (2009).

2010–2025. Seaholm EcoDistrict, Austin Central Library (LEED Platinum, opened 2017), Colony Park, Hensley Field (Dallas), Austin Light Rail sustainability lead (2022–24, proposing radiant-sky-cooling film at stations), and the speculative “Global Dream Lab” projects. The 50th-anniversary book 50 Years of Serious Commotion (2025) collects essays from the “Max’s Pot diaspora,” including Ken Haggard‘s “The Pioneer Spirit,” which groups Baer with Bill Mollison and Harold Hay as the movement’s tough, thorny pioneers.

Connections to the New Mexico scene

• July 1972 pilgrimage: Fisk and Bolton drove a 1968 Chevy pickup from Austin to New Mexico, spending “a few days” with Steve and Holly Baer, then visiting Peter Van Dresser in El Rito. Fisk: “The main thing that was going on was to get peer confidence… His [van Dresser’s] place was the place to go to learn what solar was really about” (Martin 2013, pp.111–118). The Fisk–van Dresser bond lasted until van Dresser’s death in 1983; Fisk keynoted the 10th-anniversary Life Technics Conference at Ghost Ranch in 1982 and received the Peter van Dresser award.
• Working Atlas drum wall citation (1977): “The Steve Baer drum wall, while not a trombe system, has proven the technical suitability and aesthetic desirability of using water in steel drums as a south facing collector wall” (35 Years, p.80) — an early formal citation of DrumWall in a state planning document.
• Peer network: Daria Bolton Fisk named Baer among the Center’s formative peers — “I think of Geoff Stanford, Howard Scoggins, Steve Baer, learning by doing and not afraid to fail” (35 Years, p.16). Sam Martin’s roll call of pioneers pairs “Steve and Holly Baer of Zomeworks (1969)” with the Todds, Lovins, and Sim Van der Ryn (2013, p.34).
• Dar al Islam (1980): CMPBS’s Steve Musick and Jeff Lanza joined the construction of Hassan Fathy’s mosque at Abiquiu, NM, at Simone Swan’s invitation (50 Years, p.356).
• Ken Haggard collaboration: California’s first code-approved straw-bale residence was a Fisk–Ken Haggard collaboration (Martin 2013, endnote 107); Haggard appears on CMPBS’s 1997 staff list.

Contrast with Baer

The archive’s scaling question gets a natural experiment here: both organizations started from 1970s passive solar hardware for poor communities. Baer kept inventing hardware and rejected certification systems (“One can no more subsidize the sun than heat it up”); Fisk built certification systems — and the Austin program his center designed became LEED’s ancestor, while Zomeworks’ passive thermal products stayed niche. CMPBS’s night-sky trickle roof (Carrizo Springs, 1980) and Baer’s Cool Cell/Double Play line are parallel solutions neither seems to have borrowed from the other.

See also

• Pliny Fisk III — co-founder and co-director

• Gail Vittori — co-director since the 1980s

• Daria Bolton Fisk — co-founder (1975–1980)

• Steve Baer — cited in the Working Atlas; visited July 1972

• Peter Van Dresser — Fisk’s mentor-peer in the NM scene

• Ken Haggard — straw-bale collaborator, 50 Years essayist

• Harold Hay — Skytherm got a full Working Atlas entry

• New Mexico Solar Energy Association — the NM institutional parallel

• Zomeworks Corporation — the hardware-company counterpart

• DrumWall — cited in the 1977 Working Atlas

• Why hasn’t passive thermal scaled? — CMPBS as the policy-path contrast case

• 35 Years of Serious Commotion (2010) — the library’s copy of the 35th-anniversary book

• Architectural Energy Corporation

• Cap’A

• DOE Solar Decathlon

• Sun, Wind, and Light: Architectural Design Strategies

• UK Green Building Council

Sources

• CMPBS: 35 Years of Serious Commotion (Fisk & Vittori, 2010)
• CMPBS: 50 Years of Serious Commotion (Fisk & Vittori, 2025)
• Pliny Fisk III: Creating a Maximum Potential Future (Martin, 2013)