Mother Earth News published a nice article written by Joe Silins about his journey as a natural builder and building his small straw bale guest house. The first paragraph reads: “Building my own straw bale guest house was the culmination of one journey and the beginning of another. After graduating from college in 2005 with … Read more
I just found out about the Earth Building Academy and their online courses. They have been teaching for 20 years and recently ran a free online pizza oven course and had confirmation that online courses really work. They currently are offering a 3 month series of online classes that starts on Monday, January 18th and … Read more
As many of you know I maintain an “Ask the Experts” opportunity at www.greenhomebuilding.com for people to post specific questions that they might have regarding various aspects of natural building and sustainable architecture. I have been doing this for about two decades and some of the experts have been helping me with this for about … Read more
Teo Briseño in Southern California is an artist with many natural materials as his pallet. You can see the range of his work on his website: Brisenoarts.org One of his most recent works is this dome made with natural stone and wood. The locally harvested wood was cured for 2.5 years. Thin shell dome is … Read more
In the last post I referenced the work of Sindhu Bhaskar as part of the Thannal Mud Homes Trust in India. She and her architect husband Biju built their own earthbag home made almost entirely with natural materials. In this video you can see how they made this 550 Sq Ft home in one and … Read more
Over one-third of the world’s population still lives in mud homes made with mud, but their popularity has been steadily declining. A recent survey conducted by scientists from India and The Netherlands found that cement’s popularity and availability were the main reason. It is a matter of “societal image” that is the key barrier to … Read more