Malcolm Wells Office (Original) - Cherry Hill, NJ - Satellite Imagery Oddities on Waymarking.com

This is one of two earth houses. This one being the original, the other, across the street, the later. When this was built, Wells backfilled the entire structure with three feet of dirt further submerging the building which was already slightly underground. There are a few interesting curiosities about the building. The outside has a non-traditional date stone which consists of nails spelling out 1 18 65. His name can be found incised in concrete at the entrance to one of the rooms on the floor. Big on quotations, there are a couple he wrote on the wall. Out front is a curved wall with a quotation he painted from General Omar Bradley. The business owners were nice enough to give me a complete tour which is how i learned about all the interesting details of the house/building.

In the sixties, Wells had a thriving architecture business. Around this time he built his own office at the intersection of Cuthbert Blvd and Park Blvd in Cherry Hill. It was in the same style as many of his works of that time - large timber beams, sloping roofs, and concrete work with a vague Frank Lloyd Wright like look/feel to it, except for one exception, it was partially underground.

Wells was touched by the environmental movement or moved by the changes he saw in his own community. It was brought home in --- when the road that his office was on was widened, divided, and altered to include entrance and exit ramps, with much of the roadway expansion coming out of his lot. The quiet road was now 6 lanes and just feet from his office front door. Wells responded with a concrete wall separating and protecting his office from the roadway. The wall is a beautiful artifact poured in swirling layers of concrete of varied texture. It makes a sweeping curve along the roadway, and facing out towards the intersection is a text in tall letters cast into the concrete. Its a quote from Omar Bradley (former General) that says "If we are not careful we shall leave our children a legacy of billion dollar roads leading nowhere except to other congested places like those they left behind." He was so very right. SOURCE

Biography of Wells
His work in architecture and design began in 1953. After 10 years "spent spreading corporate asphalt on America in the name of architecture," he began to feel that the Earth's surface was "made for living plants, not industrial plants;" and took up the challenge of underground architecture. This was reflected in his semi-underground office at Cuthbert Blvd and Park Blvd in Cherry Hill, NJ, adjacent to the Cooper River. His interests were in energy efficiency, aesthetics, land preservation and restoration "A Regeneration-based Checklist for Design and Construction", and durability of materials, among other aspects. His books have sold over 120,000 copies to similarly minded designers and to laymen alike. Wells died Friday, November 27, 2009, with his wife Karen North Wells and son John Wells at his side. SOURCE