You’ve heard of the artisanal food movement, but according to ZEITGUIDE friend Marc Kushner, co-founder and CEO of the multi-service platform Architizer, there’s a similar trend happening now in architecture.

Kushner, whose acclaimed TED Talk and book “The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings” is out now, told us recently that “just as food, jewelry, clothing, and beer before it, artisanal architecture focuses on craft, locality, and materiality stemming from a desire for uniqueness and a resistance to tech-everything.”

The idea is to create spaces that are not just enjoyable to look at, but also to touch, smell, and inhabit.

Perhaps, nothing embodies this trend more than the Indonesian architecture firm Ibuku. Founded by former Donna Karen print designer Elora Hardy, the firm focuses on creating lavish inhabitable structures out of bamboo. As Hardy explained in a recent Ted Talk, if designed correctly, these all-bamboo structures have the same strength as steel and can withstand earthquakes. The structures, which include classrooms to private residences, are also lightly treated with an insecticide so they are not compromised by termites.

The use of natural and the “upcycling” of old materials in architecture has been seen elsewhere throughout Asia. Kushner referred us to examples by architects from a21 Studio who used enormous stocks of scrap wood to construct a spiraling structure for Salvaged Ring Coffee Shop in Nha Trang, Vietnam. The APAP Open School in South Korea was built using old shipping containers by architecture firm LOT-EK.

As cities become oversaturated by glossy architecture here in the U.S, the pendulum is poised to swing to something more human.Artisanal architecture might just provide the momentum.

To Mike Lubin, director of NYC real estate agency Brown Harris Stevens, that’s a good thing. Luxury doesn’t have to be a $30+ million glass box in the sky above Manhattan. It also can be a cozy wood-burning fireplace, a view of a garden beyond a bedroom window, or the patina of beautiful old wood floors. As Lubin said, “Good taste and great wealth don’t need to be connected.”