As part of the Silver City Clay Festival, Jeff Leblanc conducted a three-day cob workshop on his property, introducing the attendees to the basics of building cob walls and plastering them. There were nine participants, most of them thinking that they might well utilize cob techniques in building a residence. Jeff has lived in the … Read more
There is a good article about the growing interest and popularity of using hempcrete in the United States. It addresses both the beneficial aspects of using hempcrete and the hurdles that still need to be jumped to actually use it. You can read the article at www.upi.com
A pair of new bamboo structures have appeared in a Park in the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston, MA. The 14-foot tall bamboo teepee-like structures were installed by alumni from Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) who learned about bamboo construction and architecture through Bamboo Bali Studio, a WIT independent study program set in Bali. In recent … Read more
There are plenty of ways to polish clay, this is just one put together for this video, but the concepts are the same for other polished plasters, like tadelakt. You can watch the video at www.youtube.com Plaster mixes: These mixes vary greatly depending on your substrate, weather, clay, sand, and application. And a test should … Read more
An article entitled “Typical wildfire recovery is ‘rebuilding to burn’, but there’s another way” makes the point that instead of rebuilding burned houses with the same mainstream concepts that continue to be vulnerable to fires, people should look toward more naturally fire-resistant methods, such as strawbale, cob, adobe, stone, etc. Not only are these methods … Read more
On a hill in an olive grove overlooking the sea and the monasteries of Mount Athos in the Mediterranean, Eva Sopeoglou designed a low-maintenance weekend home that reflects a season’s and a day’s evolving sunlight. The project is highly experimental and employs cutting-edge digital CAD/CAM technology in an innovative way. The design itself carefully considered … Read more