the Natural Building School

Building Sacred Space

The building frame pictured here may eventually become a private home, part of an extended family network, a healing center, workshop venue… and likely to be each one in its long, healthful life. One vision for it, consistent from the start, is sacred space: an environment created thoughtfully, out of dedication to a revived sensibility to place, by loving, aware designers, builders, students and friends—experimenters all!

          I called the building "Leela" so that the intensity of the project would be balanced by the lightness of the name; leela means "play" in Sanskrit. Designed over the course of several years to be a passive solar, energy-efficient structure with plenty of thermal mass and insulative materials, each in their appropriate place, Leela's life functions will be supported by solar panels for electricity; solar collectors and propane (and, later, methane) for hot water and cooking, and wood heat that can also be used for cooking and hot water.

          Leela is the first full-sized building of its kind at Earthaven Ecovillage. When we first envisioned building homes at Earthaven, many of us fell in love with the concepts and methods of natural building, especially cob and clay-straw, and it still surprises me that most folks have felt daunted by the challenges this type of (to us) innovative building presents, and I'm happy to say that somehow my love affair with the materials and magic of natural, earth-and-straw-based building have survived and brought us this far: just under a year before moving day!

          Besides the earthy, cozy, embracing feeling promised by a mud-and-straw building, it's awesome being part of a large, constantly changing, cooperative unskilled labor force working under talented guidance to raise such beautiful, please-touch-me walls. Of course, it took plenty of technical know-how to build the foundation and frame. And it takes many hours of thoughtful consideration and an equal number of instantaneously creative moments to put it all together. But the chance to promote and encourage folks to consider that affordable, exquisitely detailed structures are possible is another key mission of this project.

Much progress was made during the 2006 building season. Learn more and see photos as we head into the 2007 episode of this adventure.

For more information, to register for a class, or to come by for a tour, call me or send me an email.