Education

Mainstreaming Natural Building

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breakout

At the recent Natural Building Colloquium in New Mexico, besides all of the workshops and presentations already mentioned in earlier blog posts, there were a number of fairly spontaneous breakout groups or conversations. I participated in a couple these; one was about the future of book publishing, but the most interesting one was looking at how we can bring natural building more into mainstream acceptance. This turned out to be a three day ongoing brainstorm with up to a dozen people at each session.

Janell Kapoor of Kleiwerks International proposed this discussion and it attracted many of the seasoned movers and shakers of the natural building movement. Joe Kennedy became the scribe, keeping 9 pages of notes of comments as they emerged.

Janell suggested doing a SWOT analysis, or looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to accomplishing the goal of advancing natural building to become more commonly accepted practice. Rather than outline all of the collected suggestions, I will give you my opinion about these aspects.

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The Art of Natural Building Faire

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The last day of the Natural Building Colloquium in New Mexico was open to the general public as the Art of Natural Building Faire. We started out our day with the usual morning circle where several of the key organizers of the Colloquium were honored. This included Michael G. Smith who coordinated the entire schedule for the week; he did an excellent job of  this.

Michael G. Smith is honored for his service in coordinating the Colloquium.
Michael G. Smith was honored for his service in coordinating the Colloquium.

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Hands-On Workshops at the NBC

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In addition to the tree house and rocket stove projects already described, there were quite a few other hands-on demonstration projects happening at the Natural Building Colloquium (NBC), and I’ll describe a few of these.

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A simple straw bale wall was erected on a prepared concrete foundation; this was directed by Bill Steen with the assistance of Matts Myhrman and many others. This L-shaped wall would immediately serve as a kind of performance stage and could eventually be enclosed for a building.

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Rocket Oven and Griddle

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One of the ongoing workshops at the Natural Building Colloquium was the construction of a unique Rocket Stove design that incorporated both a large barrel oven and a huge griddle for baking and cooking. This was a joint project of Max Edleson (of www.firespeaking.com) and Flemming Abrahamsson from Denmark. The unit would become part of a covered outdoor kitchen that will serve the Black Range Lodge for many years to come.

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In the above photo you can see them just beginning to lay out the initial bricks on the concrete base. The fire box was on one end and the chimney was opposite this on the other end. The bricks were mortared with a clay and sand mix.

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Colloquium Discussion about Rebuilding Nepal

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One of the most significant contributions that I was able to make at the recent Natural Building Colloquium in New Mexico occurred in conjunction with a presentation about what Builders Without Borders is doing in Nepal to help with reconstruction efforts there. This presentation was done by three individuals, all shown in the photo below.

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On the left is Martin Hammer, the current director of Builders Without Borders; in the middle is a young architect who recently returned from Nepal having initiated a multi-story urban residential unit using confined masonry within reinforced concrete; on the right is Parshu Dahal, who is a Nepali slated to receive assistance from the Builders Without Borders organization.

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The Natural Building Colloquium

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I have just returned from an intensive week of immersion in the varied world of natural building at the Natural Building Colloquium in Kingston, New Mexico. The Black Range Lodge hosted this event, the fourth one that has occurred there, and the fourth that I have attended. Between 150 and 170 folks were there, many of them long-time pillars of this diverse community of enthusiasts.

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The first Colloquium was in 1995 and was organized as a way to get folks together so they could have time to become acquainted and share information. The idea was that if people had this opportunity it would not only advance the art of natural building, but it might quell the tendency for competing factions to form and create discord or animosity among practitioners. I think that this intention has been realized to a great extent; we really have become a close-knit family that is aligned with the purpose of spreading the word of how the natural building movement can help move society towards a more sustainable future. It was an international event, with representatives from all of the Americas, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Nepal and Europe.

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