| May 11, 2009 | to | May 14, 2009 |
Ashland, OR
Learn about how to roof an EcoNest home. Course includes instruction and hands on practice in: hip and gable framing, layout and roof math, thermal performance & rainwater catchment. Instructor: Robert Laporte. Cost: $475/$760 couples. See our website for more information www.econest.com
| May 8, 2009 | to | May 9, 2009 |
Ashland, OR
Come Play in the mud! Learn about plaster recipes, colors and textures, wall preparation, tools & equipment and how to mix and apply scratch, brown and finish coats. Instructor: Robert Laporte. Cost $220/$355 couples. See our website for more information: www.econest.com
| June 1, 2009 | to | July 10, 2009 |
Santa Fe, New Mexico
www.econest.com At its finest, building a handcrafted home is a soulful experience combining art, science and craft and involving mind, body and soul. The knowledge and skill to build mindfully is not learned overnight. The EcoNest Company realizes the vital importance of passing this craft on to the next generation and offers apprenticeship programs to promising individuals who feel a calling to make fine ecological home building their life’s work.
“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”
-Winston Churchill.
The creation of a home is, by no means, a simple act. Thousands of decisions will go into that process and those decisions will be based on stated or unstated cultural values. A home built with the intention of being the largest space for the least amount of money will look, feel and act very differently than one where the driving force of the design is “authenticity”, the health of the occupant and concern for our ecology. It costs a little more per square foot to build a home that won’t harm our health and more again to build one that will deeply nurture us. No one expects a superbly engineered Mercedes to cost the same as a compact economy car because we understand the quality factor. But when it comes to assessment of real estate there is a disproportionate emphasis on initial “cost per square foot” and this remains a stumbling block for home owners who would choose quality over quantity. Our homes are our greatest investment not just financially but in our health, the health of the environment and in our children’s future. Continue Reading…
by Paula Baker-Laporte and Robert Laporte
Our homes should be our sanctuaries. They should nurture our well-being. But they often do not. Sick-building syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivities are relatively new terms describing a growing phenomenon: people becoming chronically ill due to chemical and biological toxins found inside modern homes and workplaces.
After World War II, the booming building industry became the proving ground for new industrialized products which rapidly replaced building techniques that been perfected over centuries. Unfortunately, new has not necessarily proven to be better.
The impacts of industrial chemicals on human and ecological health has renewed interest in building methods such as rammed earth, cob, adobe and clay/straw. As an architect-and-builder team, we have looked to pre-industrial building materials and techniques, reevaluated them in terms of modern comfort and found them to be not only viable but, in many ways, superior to the mass-manufactured products used to build North American homes.
In our most recent book, Eco Nest: Creating Sustainable Sanctuaries of Clay, Straw and Timber, published by Gibbs Smith, we outline the advantages and techniques of combining timberframe and clay/straw construction and provide case studies based on our own projects. Continue Reading…
