Community – Page 92 – Natural Building Blog

How to build with clay… and community

June 3, 2022January 4, 2014 by Owen Geiger

Oh my, what a story. I spent an hour clicking through his site looking at drawings and watching videos. The story keeps getting better the more you learn. Kéré’s work has depth and quality. He is very inspiring.

“Diébédo Francis Kéré knew exactly what he wanted to do when he got his degree in architecture… He wanted to go home to Gando in Burkina Faso, to help his neighbors reap the benefit of his education. In this charming talk, Kéré shows off some of the beautiful structures he’s helped to build in his small village in the years since then, including an award-winning primary school made from clay by the entire community.”

Crystal Waters Ecovillage

June 3, 2022October 15, 2013 by Owen Geiger

“An introduction to Crystal Waters covering permaculture design, innovative housing design, intentional community living and land restoration. Crystal Waters is situated in rural south east Queensland Australia. Filmed in 2001-2002. This video is the first of several related videos covering Crystal Waters.”

Earthbag Dome Project in Thailand

June 3, 2022October 12, 2013 by Owen Geiger

Earthbag dome project and workshops at Rak Tamachat in Thailand

“Rak Tamachat in Thailand is building a four dome cluster around a central pool designed as a natural pool. This is an ambitious project where you will see the complete build cycle from start to finish. To assist with that they are hiring a Thai work crew to help with the labor so that those who’ve come to learn can focus on learning the techniques involved and not just spend their time filling and tamping (although, there will be plenty of that). Everyone should get to experience setting of foundations, windows, doors, plumbing and electrical, exterior and interior plasters.

Final Vanuatu Drawings

June 3, 2022September 23, 2013 by Owen Geiger

The project in Vanuatu is moving along. Here are the final drawings. We modified my $300 Earthbag House design to meet the needs of locals in Vanuatu. The houses are clustered, two rooms have been added in each house, the porch enclosed and a common outdoor work area included.

America’s 1st tiny house hotel in dense Portland

June 3, 2022September 19, 2013 by Owen Geiger

These are the sort of projects that people write me about and we discuss behind the scenes. This could be a great little business if you make the tiny houses yourself out of recycled materials. Build with cash one at a time.

Ark Soaring in the Sky

June 3, 2022September 2, 2013 by Owen Geiger

Kikuma Watanabe is an associate professor at Kochi University of Technology in Japan and is responsible for the overall design of this project. The owner is Kagayaku Inochi (glorious life), a Japanese NPO. This school for orphans is in Sangkhlaburi village, Thailand, located near the borderline between Thailand and Myanmar. In this area there are a lot of poor people who immigrated from Myanmar. This school aims to provide sustainable poverty alleviation in the area.

To provide a good future for the children, they hoped that the school would be designed to realize their dreams. So, at first the teacher asked the children to draw the dream of the school building. One of them drew a flying ship as his dream. They adapted his idea, and tried to translate the drawing into architecture.