What is Natural Building?

Natural Building is a trend, movement, or vocation, of creating structures using minimally-processed materials.  Common techniques include adobe, cob, straw-bale, timber frame, sod, rammed-earth, wattle-and-daub or bajareque, and others.  Most natural building techniques are derived from traditional building techniques around the world, as people have quite naturally been building with local materials for thousands of years!

Natural Builders enjoy using 100% natural materials like earth, straw, round wood timbers, stone, and clay.  Many also include locally-sourced and recycled materials such as scrap metal, broken concrete, parts of existing buildings, local and recycled timber and paint.  Some techniques call for small proportions of new and/or synthetic materials in order to meet building codes or allow for unusual functions -- like the plastic membrane that seals a living roof. 

These materials offer unusual opportunities and challenges for designers.  Masonry, while generally a poor insulator, has great potential for passive solar heating and cooling due to its thermal mass.   Round wood, freeform cob, and straw-bale allow for unconventional shapes, very different from rectangular variations on 4'x8' panels.  Thick walls offer space for niches or shelves, built-in furniture, dramatic doorways and windowsills.  Designers often examine local conditions like sun angles, wind direction, rainfall, soil types, temperature extremes, and vegetation plans before designing a particular building.  Hiring an architect to do this much research could get expensive quickly! but most natural-building designers are also owners and builders, whose time is rewarded by a rich relationship with the place they live. 

 Natural Building is often more labor-intensive than conventional construction, but much less energy- and waste- intensive.  It can cost as much, or as little, money as the owner wishes, as long as other resources are supplied instead.  Natural Building emphasizes human-scale activity.  Much of the work may be done by hand, and in groups.  A workshop or "barn-raising" can be a fun,  social, creative experience. 

Some natural builders enjoy speeding things up with heavy machinery or prepared materials: a tractor or cement-mixer to process large batches of cob, for example; commercial pigments instead of locally-sourced ones.  Others prefer to make the process as "natural" as the product, recruiting rockhounds and throwing parties where large work crews to dance with muddy feet.

Whatever the method, natural building tends to produce unique, sculptural buildings that are full of an earthy human energy.  They may call to mind hobbit houses, ancient ruins, artistic fantasies, or dwellings from an earlier, simpler time.

How we got involved:

Ernie Wisner grew up on the southern Oregon coast, a stone's throw from where Cob Cottage Company now operates in Coquille, OR.  Boom- and- bust cycles in the coastal  economy had Ernie on the lookout for a growing, sustainable, low-cost alternative to early retirement in a trailer.   Natural Building looked like a great alternative for durable, elegant, DIY housing.  After a few years of researching the field, Ernie dropped his other plans and took on a two-year apprenticeship under Ianto Evans. 

Natural Building appeals to Erica's interests in ecology, art, architecture, and hands-on learning.  She studied drafting, engineering, and other physical sciences and arts in college, then began to actually get her hands dirty working with Portland's Village Building Convergence  and local workshop hosts such as TLC Farm and Flying Hammer Productions.

All of the above links include great information and resources.  You can find these and other sites through the Natural Building Network, a fabulous place to connect with builders, organizations, information, and other resources.  www.naturalbuildingnetwork.org

Check our calendar for upcoming Natural Building workshops and events:

www.ErnieAndErica.info/calendar