Richie Duncan has been a designer and builder since the early days of wooden blocks and Legos. After attending University of Colorado, Boulder, he moved to Lake Tahoe, California where he apprenticed at a local design firm. Soon thereafter, he earned his license as a civil and structural engineer and opened his own design and engineering company.

After many fun, productive and creative years, he scaled back his business and sought to expand his world overseas. Over the next several years, he traveled around the world learning architecture, design, and building methods from different cultures - including living in Peru for a 2 year period, volunteering and learning traditional adobe construction. During these travels, he expanded his knowledge of sustainable building techniques and applied them to projects in the United States, even having his work accepted and published in the International Building Code.

It was during a natural building teaching engagement in Chile that he discovered the Zome geometry from another instructor. The shape captivated him, and soon thereafter he invented the hanging zome structural system and founded KODAMA to share his designs with the world. The expression of zomes as hanging furniture was the starting point for KODAMA, and he continues to explore the many uses of both the zome shape and the simple yet powerful pendulum motion.