Anthony Dente

Anthony Dente, PE, LEED AP, is a licensed engineer and principal at Verdant Structural Engineers (VSE) and Verdant Building Products (VBP) and is the vice president of the Cob Research Institute (CRI), where he is committed to appropriate material use for all structural building systems. Anthony graduated from the Architectural Engineering program at Penn State University and moved to Berkeley, CA to practice structural design and in particular, straw bale structural design, under Kevin Donahue, SE, who is now his fellow business partner at VSE. VSE has designed over 300 structures using natural-building wall systems such as straw bale, adobe, rammed earth, earthbag, and cob. With CRI, he was the lead engineer for the Cob Construction Appendix in the International Residential Code, as well as the Hemp-Lime (Hempcrete) Appendix, both the first of their kind in the US. With VBP, he is project lead for their prefabricated, carbon-storing, straw wall panels which was originally developed under the EPA SBIR grant program.

Anthony recently completed authoring Essential Cob Construction, A Guide to Design, Engineering, and Building with New Society Publishers, currently available for presale and set for release in January 2024. He also contributed to the Straw Bale Building Detail book published by the California Straw Building Association (CASBA). He is also on the advisory board of the Last Straw Journal.

Anthony is a member of the TMS Modular Unfired Clay Standards Committee developing the much-needed contemporary adobe and CEB building code and was a working group member for the development of the first low carbon concrete building code, which was commissioned by Marin County, and organized by the Embodied Carbon Network and the Ecological Building Network. Dente has advised, designed, and collaborated on numerous university research programs testing the structural behavior of natural materials, and writes and lectures extensively about appropriate use of environmentally sensitive building materials.

Anthony believes that by supporting appropriate documentation and code development of environmentally sustaining options, the building community will have the tools to design against the hazards of environmentally destructive construction as effectively as it designs against other safety hazards in the building code.

Dente was recognized by the Constellation Prize for his Sustainable Engineering Practice, and he continues as a visionary and leader in the natural and low carbon building fields. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area of California where he enjoys life as the father of twin toddlers.