The Hemp Casita of Rezolana — Rising up from the Ground

By Koa Kalish, Fibershed

Closely weaving together habitation, community, and society, Arnie pays attention to how culture was and is created.

Building a House with Light Straw Clay

By Kara Stiff, Low-Carbon Life

I admit it. It was me who brought the crazy house-building scheme into our marriage. But he encouraged me! If he hadn’t, I would have given up somewhere along the way. But I didn’t, and we built a house using light straw clay. How on Earth did that happen?

Working with Straw

By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry

These days, human-scale straw bales have been largely replaced by mammoth cylinders that require mammoth farm equipment; another way we have used the cheap energy of recent decades to burn our bridges. If you can find some of the old rectangular, metre-long bales, however, they can be put to many uses.

Wattle and Daub

By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry

These days, you spend your life paying off a house, and even building a shed or animal shelter can be expensive...For thousands of years, though, people used a simpler technique that used nothing but natural, local materials.

A Roof, a Skill, a Market: The Multiple Dimensions of Scale

By John Thackara, John Thackara blog

The Nubian Vault Association has evolved a quite different approach: the long-term, muti-dimensional cultivation of living local economies based on three kinds of value: a roof, a skill, and a market.

Resilience and Collapse: Notes from Cyprus

By Lakis Polycarpou, City of the Future

Whatever we do in Cyprus doesn’t really stay in Cyprus. It’s like the effect gets multiplied and spread, from here to the nearby regions, and from there on.

How Placemaking with “Bottle Bricks” Changes Lives

By Brennan Blazer Bird, Shareable

This is the story of how a simple idea forever changed my life, as well as the lives of many others.

Earthern Floors: Why, How, and Where

By Ashley Lubyk, Verge Permaculture

My first step onto an earthen floor (sometimes called a ‘poured adobe’ floor) awakened me.

Building with the Mudgirls

By Shawndra Miller, Shawndra Miller blog

I spent part of last week at a workshop offered by the Mudgirls, a natural building collective in British Columbia.

A Celebration of Naturally-built Theatre!

By Ian Wild, Transition Culture

I like to think that it’s the sort of place Shakespeare’s ghost visits now and then. Arriving unseen through the thick walls, seating himself at the back and enjoying plays – all manner of plays...

Can earth building scale up to the mainstream? 2: Kevin McCabe’s cob citadel

By Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture

As part of our month's exploration of the theme of 'scaling up', I recently visited Ottery St. Mary in East Devon to see Kevin McCabe, his wife Rose, and the extraordinary new cob house he has spent the last 3 years building.

Can earth building scale up to the mainstream? – ClayWorks and clay plasters

By Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture

Over the next 2 days we'll be looking at 2 aspects of earth construction, cob and clay plasters, and their potential for scaling up.