the art and beauty of natural building

a gallery

The warm, earthy, welcoming nature of natural building contrasts sharply with the crass, sterile, coldness of modern architecture.

A natural tiny house built by Bill and Athena Steen. Straw bale construction with multicolored lime and earthen plasters. Nothing is straight because it’s all done by human hands. The design and work was done by Athena Steen. Photo by her husband, Bill Steen.

Casa tiny (above) epitomizes the blocky brutalism that comes with machine built structures. I don’t consider this a home. I think Henry David Thoreau would agree.

This is exemplified by the zealous willingness of developers to prematurely tear down homes in favor of building something more extravagant, something that better plays into the hands of the globalists who profit from the consumption of planetary resources. Yes, I’m referring to the centralized, public/private - fascist - paradigm upon which modern housing is dependent.

I have a musician friend who once rented a very nice three bedroom, two bathroom house near the beach in Newport Beach, California for his family. That house had front and back yards which were full of very nice, mature trees and shrubs. Although the house was built using typical modern building systems, it was otherwise a sturdy, well built house in very good condition.

The house was 25 years old when he was notified by the landlord that it was to be torn down so that a new, much bigger house could be built on the lot. That new house has two stories, six bedrooms, five bathrooms and coveres almost the entire lot, usurping the previous front and back yard. The embodied energy in that new house is unfathomable. It was one of the early versions of what are now known as McMansions.

For a while that same tear-down paradigm was applied in Tucson. Numerous, increasingly rare, two hundred year old adobe homes were torn down by developers to make way for homes that helped line the pockets of those who control the energy greedy, resource greedy, sterile, modern housing paradigm. This culminated in a project undertaken by the city of Tucson to build a new convention center which required the purchase and destruction of severeal square city blocks of 200+ year old adobe homes. Many folks who understood the cultural and historic value of that loss organized to put a stop to it. Long story short, the convention center got built but, they won. Not a single adobe home has been destroyed since then.

Today that crass, butt ugly, modern, steel and concrete convention center sits unused for most of the year - a classic boondoggle project.

That was forty years ago. Today, the remaining older adobe homes are some of the most sought-after real estate in Tucson. They are treasured.

Why the change of attitude? Much of that came about thanks to a handful of folks who owned adobe homes and opened them up to the public for tours to raise awareness. Back then, few people had ever been inside an adobe home. It was also around that time when the adobe and rammed earth builders I wrote about in previous posts began building new adobe homes. Consequently, previously held biases about adobe homes being dirty and uncomfortable evaporated as soon as people walked into these homes. City wide, attitudes changed abruptly. Adobe construction began to experience a renaissance that continues today.

What is it about adobe, rammed earth, cob, bamboo, straw bale, timber frame and other natural building systems that makes them so appealing? Walking into the cold, hard confines of a steel, glass and concrete modern house, like the one shown below, is akin to walking into a prison cell. On the other hand, walking into the soft, lovingly crafted embrace of a two hundred year old adobe home has to be experienced to be appreciated. On the one hand you have the cold, hard, straight lines that come with the highly manufactured, overly machined building materials of modern construction.

On the other hand you have the warm, cozy feeling that can only be found in unprocessed, natural materials that come directly from the earth and show the subtleties that can only be achieved when worked by human hands.

Never underestimate the power of the human touch.

Bedroom in a straw bale home designed and built by Bill and Athena Steen. Walls are finished in earthen plasters and locally dug earthen clays. The ceiling is covered with hand woven reed mats from Mexico. The earthen floor is sealed with olive oil soap. Photo by Bill Steen.

A cob home in Somerset, England. Cob is an ancient building system in England, now popular around the world. It’s a mix of mud and straw put into the walls a handful at a time. As you can see, it’s a very sculptural medium. I’m writing this from a cob house I built for myself.

A cob and straw bale home in Dyssekilde, Denmark. The roof is traditional reed thatch (Phragmites australis), which also serves as insulation.

The kitchen and living room of the above home.

This is another Danish home that also borrows from the US straw bale building movement, while incorporating traditional Danish building materials. In particular, the seaweed roofing.

This is the conch shell, timber framed roof in the home above.

This straw bale home with a reed thatch roof in Oxford, Michigan was built by a couple of women. The straw bales were local. The reed thatch was local. The stones for the foundation were local. The timber used to frame the roof was local. Earthen and lime plasters with natural pigments.

The inside of the above home.

A cob house in Canada. All of the materials came from within ten miles of the home. The chains coming from the roof direct and soften the splash of rainfall.

The kitchen/dining area of the above home. Total cost for this home - $56,000.

Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. It’s estimated that construction with adobe began here in the 1200’s. That would make parts of this structure over 800 years old.

A friends straw bale home in Alamos, Sonora Mexico. Straight forward. In the Sonoran style. No frills. All local materials and labor… except for the flagstone flooring I did. Ceiling is a reed introduced by the Spaniards four hundred years ago known as carrizo (Arundo donax).

The dining room of the above home. Note the thickness of the walls. Furniture is made by local artisans from local resources.

This gallery would not be complete if I didn’t include a bamboo project. This is the Green School in Bali. Here, children are taught about their interdependent relationship with earth. The school was founded by John and Cynthia Hardy. Their daughter Elora has expanded the scope of their work to include bamboo construction.

Someone in the comments recently said something about a mushroom house. I had forgotten that was probably Elora’s first project as a child. It can be seen in the video below.

Elora has acknowledged that her bamboo construction projects are possible thanks to work done by Linda Garland in Bali. Linda’s work is worthy of a separate post. I had the opportunity to speak with her on several occasions before she passed in 2016.

Elora’s bamboo construction company is called Imbuku. I’ve featured several of her projects in previous posts. Here she talks about her journey from her childhood mushroom house to her current projects that are gaining recognition around the world.

She is not an architect, nor is she an engineer. She carries none of that globalist baggage. Yet she designs and builds some of the most amazing structures on earth. Unfortunately, because she has neither of those degrees and because none of her buildings conform to globalist building codes, none of her work would be legal to do in the US.

Our loss.

Much of the blame for that loss can be laid at the feet of the globalists who fund university architectural and engineering schools (international wood products corporations, steel manufacturing corporations, cement corporations, shipping corporations and so on).