Laughing House in Oregon, home to Cob Cottage Company

Hidden away in a lush Oregon woodland near Coquille, OR, USA is a collection of tiny cob homes with names like Dawn and Dusk and the jewel among them is the the home of Ianto and Linda called Laughing House. Ianto and Linda run the Cob Cottage Company sharing their many years of natural building experience and philosophy with what must now add up to hundreds of people from all over the world.

Cob is a mixture of clay, sand and straw that allows you to sculpt beautifully shaped living spaces. Building with cob is just about as close to building a nest as a human can get. Here's Ianto outside his lovely home talking about living naturally and the difference between natural building and so called 'green' building.
 

Ianto and Linda's home is a bewildering collection of the patterns that make a living space just right of the human animal. These patterns are defined in a book called 'A Pattern Language', a valuable addition to your library if you are thinking about building a home. Ianto covers many of the patterns in his book 'The Hand Sculpted house' like the low doorway (pattern No.224), half-open wall (pattern No.193) and bed alcoves (pattern No.188)

If you are building a natural home this book is a 'must have' for your collection.

Left is the bathroom with a wonderful mosaic that reaches into the deep windowsill (Pattern No.197, ‘Thick Walls’) where light reflects softly into the room on the edges of the reveals (Pattern No. 223, ‘Deep Reveals’)

Bilbo's bath song from The Fellowship of the Ring
Chapter, 'A Conspiracy Unmasked'
Read by J.R.R. Tolkien

These beautiful cob homes cost very little to build. Ianto and Linda, the founders of Cob Cottage, talk about their work in this video where you will find out just how cheap these natural homes can be.
 

	Off the treadmill with Ianto and Linda

If you are lucky enough to be in Oregon then there is an open invitation from Ianto and Linda to join them on the 11-14th January or 1-4th March 2013 to help with, and learn about, building maintenance and other Cob Cottage jobs that need doing. It's a wonderful opportunity to see their creative work and to be inspired to build your own cob home.