Strawbale
Congressional Briefing
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Washington,
USA ran a briefing on "Straw-Bale Construction:
Harvesting Its Potential As an Affordable and Energy-Efficient
Building Strategy" with presentations from
Laura
Bartels,
Sandy Wiggins, Bob Gough and David
Eisenberg.
Listen to the briefing on the EESI
website
Builders
Without Borders in DC
Are building an exhibit in an effort to foster better
understanding of sutainable building techniques. Visit
the Botanical Garden in Washington DC up to the 13th October
2008. Read more here.
Women
build beautiful homes
Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to
build beautiful straw bale homes
Village Building, Oregon, USA
A 10-day event from May 23rd – June 1 2008 in Portland,
Oregon in which neighborhoods activate to build shared
public places that they have envisioned, designed, funded,
and will maintain for themselves. It includes hands-on
education in permaculture design and construction, ecological
building, and public art. More about The
Village Building Convergence.
The World prefers straw bale
Results are in from September's ecoVote and the World
clearly prefers straw bale construction but in the Americas
cob and strawbale are equally preferred. Read more about
the ecoVote results
Women
build beautiful homes
Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to
build beautiful straw bale homes
Special homes around the World
Here are some of the special homes you can find on the
natural homes map.
Put your house on Natural Homes
Here
is a short letter from Tim & Patricia from their
straw bale eco house
in Argentina.
"The
folks who have come to visit all learned about the
house from Natural Homes. Keep up the good work!
We are pleased that we have a positive influence
here. It's all great fun!"
To
help others who are thinking of going green we have
launched our mapping system so that natural homes around
the world are more accessible. If you know about a home
that you think should be on our map then contact us.
Take a look at the Natural
Homes Map.
How
to use this site We
hope you will find plenty of things here to help you
on your way to building a natural, eco-friendly home.
The site is divided in to five parts.
Strawbale
Workshop in Russia
August 18 to September 3, 2008 Bobrovka, Altai Krai,
Russia. A unique educational
event for natural building enthusiasts, designers, architects,
builders, and anyone with an adventurous spirit, faith
in sustainable human habitation. More about the Altai
Project
A
sad but hopeful story
Steve James would like to live quietly and work on his
building projects in peace. He has shared his skills with
many people but now he has probably lost his home because
of it. Read more about Steve
James
and
see his house here on the natural
homes map
Natural
Building Colloquium
Sunday, July 27 through Saturday, August 2, 2008. It's
the fifth year that the PeaceWeavers have hosted this
family-friendly event at the Thunder Mountain Retreat
Center near Bath, New York, offering very full days of
teaching, learning, building, and networking. Read more
here.
International Natural Build Colloquium October
19-26, 2008 Santa Barbara, California, USA. More details
will be posted on Natural
Building Network
soon.
Tha
Lammas Story Lammas
is applying for planning permission to build an ecovillage
in Wales which combines the traditional smallholding
model with the latest innovations in environmental design,
green technology and permaculture. More about Lammas
Celebrating
Sustainability, NC, USA June
20-29 2008, Asheville,
with Kleiwerks, run a city wide collaboration of local
communities building sustainable solutions for the city.
You can volunteer for 2 weeks and up to a year on the
project. More details on Kleiwerks
and ashevillage.org
Warning
in the Americas
Results
are in from October's ecoVote and the World clearly prefers
to invest in straw bale homes but not in the Americas
where earthen structures are prefered. Read more here.
Put
a map on your blog
The natural
homes map is now available for you to include in your
blog. This is an example
blog
that displays
straw bale houses. Get the code for your blog here
and spice up your eco-friendly blog.
What's
an Earthship? You
can see pictures of earthships with links to the builder's
websites here
and get a good introduction about earthships on Wikipedia
Off-Grid
in New Mexico
We are looking for off-grid homes to put on the natural
homes map. Recently Chris Niner contacted us to
put Green
Mountain Solar
on the map. His website if full of good advice and well
worth a visit.
Reasons
to go solar in the USA?
Listen
to John Schaeffer of Real
Goods
discuss three reasons to go solar and some of the very
tangible benefits in this quick
two-minute video
Would
you like to contribute If
you know of any sites we should link to, or books we should
list or maybe you know of a natural home we should include,
then please write to us at house@naturalhomes.org.
Strawbale
Congressional Briefing
,
Sandy Wiggins, Bob Gough and 
Village Building, Oregon, USA
International Natural Build Colloquium
Put
a map on your blog
What's
an Earthship?
What's
a cordwood house?
