If you go to www.messynessychic.com you will find a delightful array of archived photos of various kinds of shelter carved out of tree trunks, mostly from the giant sequoia found on the west coast of the U.S. There are also some descriptions of who created them and how they were used.
David Easton passed away in February this year at 72. Since the ’70s, he advocated for and experimented with earth as a building material. In a 2018 interview he described how he learned about Rammed Earth and why he chose to try it. “I found a book on the rack of a natural food store … Read more
Hermits clamped their dwellings on to Meteora boulders in Greece. Meteora has been considered a holy place since the Paleolithic, several millennia before Christians were attracted by the area’s majestic boulders. Later, monasticism flourished since Byzantine times, during which at least 24 monasteries were founded and maintained. Today, only six of them are inhabited. Meteora … Read more
Over a decade ago there was an active Natural Building Network that maintained a website with a membership directory where natural builders could find each other and communicate. There was a board of directors that coordinated the organization as a non profit membership association promoting natural building principles, materials and practitioners worldwide. They supported ecological … Read more
Building with adobe — a material created by mixing clay-rich soil with straw, sand, and other organic materials — has been in use since 8300 BC. It is popular in arid and semiarid places where wood is scarce. The word “Adobe” derives from the Arabic “al ṭūb” meaning “the bricks.” Adobe buildings are low energy, … Read more
Here are some fun examples of playful architecture in Europe: The Cube Houses in Rotterdam were designed by architect Piet Blom, and are based on the concept of “living in an urban roof.” The houses are a set of angled cubes tilted at 45 degrees. This unusual design theoretically optimizes the available space inside the … Read more