13th International Hemp Building Symposium

Steve Allin

IHBA Director

Steve Allin is a pioneer in hemp construction and the founder and Director of the International Hemp Building Association. He has been building with hemp and promoting its benefits around the world since the 1990s. Steve wrote Building with Hemp (2005), the first book on the subject. He has taught hemp building through hands-on courses in many countries across Europe, the Americas, and Asia—helping introduce this natural building method to new places often where the system had never been used before and has also initiated many businesses and projects around the world. He recently launched a new company Stems Logic Ltd which offers custom tailored solutions to producing and processing Hemp materials both for the Construction industry and high value fibre markets.

Danny Desjarlais

Industrial Hemp Construction Project Manager

Danny Desjarlais is the Industrial Hemp Construction Project Manager at the Lower Sioux Indian Community, a small reservation near Morton, Minnesota. As an enrolled member of the tribe, Danny has dedicated his efforts to rebuilding his community with healthier alternative building materials that will benefit future generations. He has successfully promoted the recent expansion of hemp building activities at the Lower Sioux Indian Community reservation and is recognised across the United States as a leading advocate for the use of hemp building materials and social housing.

Guillame Delannoy

Guillaume Delannoy is Study Manager at FRD-CODEM, a french technical center dedicated to the development of biobased materials. He joined FRD-CODEM in 2019 after his PhD on the ageing of hempcrete. For years FRD-CODEM is invested on hempcrete by the development hemp hurds specifications and characterization tools, or R&D programs (end-of-life scenario, recognition of hygrothermal properties, external insulation or earth-hemp production), but also study for the development of hemp production area and decortication process. Guillaume is also vice-president of Construire en Chanvre, in charge of scientific aspects.

Gabriel Gauthier

Artcan

Inspired by the urgent need for sustainable building, Gabriel Gauthier discovered hempcrete. This ancient yet revolutionary material transformed his vision for construction. In 1995, he began exploring hemp’s agro-economic potential, spending three years in France and Switzerland to master and modernize ancestral techniques. He founded Artcan with a mission to create authentic living spaces that reconnect modernity with nature. Artcan aims to improve well-being, relationships, and environmental footprint, one home at a time.

April Hatch, RN, MSN

April is a registered nurse with 20 years of experience, during which she has observed a troubling rise in diseases linked to environmental and food toxins, along with a steady decline in overall quality of life. She holds a Master’s in Public Health Nursing and is currently on the path to becoming a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Rooted in a deep love for people, plants, and the planet, April brings over eight years of experience providing cannabis education to patients, retail staff, and students enrolled in Cannabis Pharmacology at Saint Louis University. With a passion for nature-based medicine and heart-centered advocacy, she works tirelessly to spread science among the healthcare and hemp communities.

Andrea Hermann M.Sc, B.Gs, P.Ag
Director, HPS Food & Ingredients

Anndrea Hermann is recognised and revered as a dedicated hemp ambassador of the highest calibre, with over 23 years of experience advising the global hemp industry. She earned her Bachelor’s in Hemp Ecolonomics (2002) and her Master’s in Plant Science, specialising in Hemp Fibre Agronomy (2008). Anndrea is President Emeritus and the longest-standing board member of the Hemp Industries Association, and Vice President Emeritus of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. In 2021, she co-founded the rural non-profit Gerhard E. Dekker Regenerative Education Center, focused on nature-based education, and she also serves as a Scouts Canada leader. Her many accolades include the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance Business Builders Award (2009), induction into the Hemp History Hall of Fame (2017), the HIA Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), and the WAFBA Lady of Agriculture Award (2023). Anndrea is also the author of Everybody Loves Trallala, a children’s book about a little hempseeds journey. She continues to support the hemp sector while helping facilitate knowledge in the next generation.

Dr Eshrar Latif

Dr Eshrar Latif is an Associate Professor at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, UK. His PhD focused on the hygrothermal performance of hemp-based insulation materials. He has contributed to key research and consultancy projects including the HEMPSEC project on prefabricated hemp-lime panels, the Hemp-Lime Building Monitoring Project, and the Hemp-Wool Bio-Envelope Project. Dr Latif publishes widely on the performance of hemp-lime and other bio-based materials in construction. A Certified Passive House Designer and LEED Green Associate, he is co-author of Thermal Insulation Materials for Building Applications, advancing evidence-based approaches to low-impact, durable building solutions.

Cameron McIntosh

Americhanvre

Cameron is the founder of Americhanvre along with his wife and partner, Melissa.  Based in Allentown, PA, Americhanvre are the exclusive licensees of the Baumer Ereasy Spray Applied Hempcrete System and have worked to deploy the Ereasy system in the United States.  Since 2019, Americhanvre has installed hempcrete on nearly fifty different residential and commercial residential projects and have trained and equipped fourteen unique Ereasy system owner operators, including the Lower Sioux Indian Communities Industrial Hemp Construction team led by Danny Desjarlais.  Cameron also participated in the writing of the IRC Appendix BL for hempcrete construction and is also a member of the board of directors for both the National Hemp Association and PA Hemp Industry Council.

Laura Schramm

BOKU University

Laura Schramm is a Master’s student in Green Building Engineering at BOKU University in Vienna and a Structural Design Technician, specialising in detailed execution planning for vertical extensions of historic residential buildings. She currently works as a design engineer at Obenauf in Vienna, Austria. Previously, she worked as a technical project manager for Nafz Holzhaus in Germany.

Alex Sparrow

UK Hempcrete

Alex Sparrow is the founder and CEO of UK Hempcrete. He is recognised globally as one of the leading experts in the use of hempcrete and other bio-based construction products. He co-authored The Hempcrete Book: Designing and Building with Hemp-Lime (2014), which is widely acknowledged as the definitive guide to this remarkable building material.
Alex sits on the board of the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products in the UK, speaks internationally on hempcrete, and chairs the board at YorSpace (York’s Community Land Trust), as well as providing specialist bio-based architectural design, building performance modelling, and consultancy services with a global reach, to promote the use of hempcrete and bio-based construction materials. 

Ian Svilokos

Architect, PIE

Ian Svilokos is a licensed architect, fabricator, and founder at the collaborative PIE – a research-based architecture, design and fabrication studio. While earning his Bachelor of Design in Architecture from the University of Florida, and his Masters in Architecture from Yale University, Ian spent time building single-family homes across the northeast. Upon completion of his Masters, he relocated to Bali, Indonesia to develop and design hyper-regional resorts with Karma Royal Group traveling to multiple properties across the globe.

He has been based in Los Angeles for a decade now, where he has led award-winning, multi-family and institutional projects including Pittsburgh’s MuseumLab with KoningEizenberg Architecture, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi with Frank O. Gehry Partners. He finds inspiration in working with various mediums to help projects find their greatest potential. Whether metal, earth, wood, or plant, his pursuits in design are informed by the unique opportunities each material presents. Ian uses his personal history and diverse knowledge base to find and design experiences unique to each project.

Dr. Arta Yazdanseta

Doctor of Design, LEED, Associate AIA, Assistant Professor of Technology
School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Dr. Arta Yazdanseta is an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Architecture. Her research focuses on carbon-smart, bio-aggregate materials such as hemp-lime, with an emphasis on material circularity, low-carbon envelopes, and design for disassembly. She holds a Doctor of Design from Harvard GSD and brings over a decade of academic and professional experience. As co-PI on a DOE HeRS project, she collaborates with industry leaders to prototype scalable building systems. Her recent Brown Fellowship fieldwork across Europe documents aging hemp-lime structures and resident experience to inform construction industry stakeholders.