First Earth, Uncompromising Ecological Architecture
A documentary by David Sheen, about building healthy houses out of earth, creating social justice and evaluating the status quo of how ( and in what ) we live. David traveled the world in search of ancient earthen buildings and sustainable cultures while interviewing top experts in the field. This is the full film available on YouTube – for free.
Learn more at DavidSheen.com/firstearth
Are building officials’ practices encouraging builders to perform mediocre work?
by David Eisenberg
Imagine two builders in your community. One knows the building code as a set of minimum standards and builds only to those minimums, producing the worst building he legally can. The other always is pushing the envelope at the opposite end of the spectrum, trying to build the most energy- and resource-efficient, least toxic, most environmentally and socially responsible building possible. Which builder, do you think, holds the record for the fastest and easiest time getting a set of plans through the building department, and which holds the record for the longest and most brutal experience? Nobody intends to give a pass to the worst builder and to beat the crap out of the best one, but that’s what our system does.
What if building officials reviewed the plans of the best builders first instead of putting them on the bottom of the pile because of all the complications? What if officials met with builders to learn why they are doing what they’re doing, what the benefits are, and to whom those benefits accrue? What if we all saw our building departments as a community resource for the best houses, not just as the building police preventing the worst? Continue Reading…
Numbers can help one gain perspective of the reality of our social and environmental health:
“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…
Janaia Donaldson, of Peak Moment TV, show cases a fully permitted greywater system created by Trathen Heckman, the Executitve Director of Daily Acts and Green Sangha in Petaluma, California. In the video Trathen mentions, NBN Member, Art Ludwig’s book “Create an Oasis with Greywater“.
| BSD-112: Building Science for Strawbale Buildings by John Straube, Building Science Corporation last updated 2009/02/24 |
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The System
The classic and time-proven strawbale wall assembly consists of strawbales laid flat with a 1 to 1.5 inches (25 to 38 mm) thick metal mesh reinforced cement and/or lime stucco skin applied directly to each face. Earth plasters, usually somewhat thicker, have also been widely used. It behaves in most respects like a sandwich panel system, e.g., Structural Insulated Panel Systems (skins of OSB glued to foam plastic cores), reinforced cement skins glued to a polystyrene core, etc.
The reinforced skins take almost all of the load since these are the stiffest and strongest materials in the system. The strawbales act as a substrate for the stucco and as effective insulation.
Photographs 1 and 2: Strawbale walls can be built with locally available materials and community labor (left) and are often chosen for their sculpted, massive aesthetics (right).
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…
