Builder was green before it was cool

— -- The entrepreneurial spirit and a love of architecture run deep in the blood of John Suppes, 47-year-old founder of Clarum Homes and a leading figure in the energy-saving "green building" movement that has suddenly become fashionable.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Clarum Homes and Suppes are riding the rising popularity of energy-saving "green" houses. No longer just a fad, green building is steadily gaining favor, as concern grows about global warming.

"I love construction and building," says Suppes, his office shelves stuffed with architectural design books, from Tuscany Interiors to Living With Zen. "I love getting out there and getting dirty, the rush of seeing a great product get built that people can live in and enjoy."

As a kid, Suppes relished family tales of his great-grandfather and grandfather, who were adventuresome ranchers and wildcat oilmen in Tulsa a century ago.

In his teens, he religiously read The Wall Street Journal and shadowed his father, Patrick Suppes, a Stanford philosophy professor emeritus and founder of a thriving computer educational firm called Computer Curriculum.

"He was always asking how the company was organized, how it made a profit," says Patrick Suppes, who later sold his company.

John Suppes also learned from his late mother, Joanne, who studied architecture at Harvard University in the 1950s under Walter Gropius, founder of the influential Bauhaus design movement.

Joanne Suppes often drove her children around the San Francisco Bay Area, explaining how buildings could have been designed more attractively, to catch more light, to blend into the natural surroundings. She would be pleased to see her son's work today.

In the past decade, Clarum and its subsidiary, Byldan Construction, have developed and built more than 30 subdivisions, apartment complexes and affordable housing in Northern California.

Clarum specializes in the "Enviro-Home," a model eco-friendly house with solar power, high-efficiency furnaces, on-demand water heaters, non-toxic paint, landscaping that conserves water and other state-of-the-art features.