Intro to Natural Building

The natural building movement is continuously gaining popularity
for many reasons. It offers affordable housing that is healthy, safe,
comfortable, beautiful, unique, and spiritually uplifting. It values
environmental and social sustainability, offering simple techniques
based on local, renewable resources thus minimizing the
environmental impact of our housing needs.
It is also fun and creative for old and young alike.

Michael G. Smith says in his book The Art of Natural Building; Design,
Construction, Resources, "Natural Building is personally empowering
because it teaches that everyone has, or can easily acquire, the skills they
need to build their own home."

And how does one gain these skills? By working along side others on
natural building projects, reading books like The Art of Natural Building
(more listed below), and enrolling in workshops being offered all
over the world.

One of our main focuses right now at the ETC is on the Natural Building Introductory Weekend, our first workshop of the season, April 4-6, 2008.

The weekend should provide a holistic overview of natural building methods and is not intended to be an in depth exploration of any individual topic. We'll learn about straw, cob, wood, wattle and daub, adobe, earthbags, earthships, traditional Mexican styles, timber frame, domes and arches, earthen floors, earth plasters and alis, passive solar, foundations and drainage, living roofs and pole frame... Wowy cowy. Through hands on sessions each day, we will gain practical experience in integrating a number of simple and valuable technologies into one working solution.

I am excited that I will be able to take part in the workshop. I have very little experience in this stuff and only worked with cob twice. The first time was helping with a dragon-like oven and bench at Tryon Life Community Farm in Portland, OR. The other time was here at the ETC last fall, while exploring the place and deciding if I wanted to accept the Office Manager position here the following March. I helped start the creation of a masonry stove, and when I came back it was finished!

Mixing cob with my feet on left, and finished stove on right.


Some great books on the subject include:

• THE ART OF NATURAL BUILDING; DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, RESOURCES by Joseph F. Kennedy, Michael G. Smith, and Catherine Wanek, Editors
• BUILDING WITHOUT BORDERS; SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION FOR THE GLOBAL VILLAGE edited by Joseph F. Kennedy
• THE HAND-SCULPTED HOUSE; A PRACTICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE TO BUILDING A COB COTTAGE by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, and Linda Smiley
  
• EARTHBAG BUILDING; THE TOOLS, TRICKS, AND TECHNIQUES by Kari Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer
• CORDWOOD BUILDING; THE STATE OF THE ART by Rob Roy
• THE STRAW BALE HOUSE by Athena Swentzell Steen, Bill Steen, and David Bainbridge, with David Eisenberg

These are various natural building projects on the ETC, under construction...