Natural Building, inspired by nature
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Natural builders have been inspired by nature to create some
extraordinary public natural buildings and homes all over the
world.
These homes have all been inspired by natural structures from
the forest fir cones of Span to the chrysalis of the
Monarch butterfly in New Zealand.
To learn more about natural building, join our Facebook group
Talking Natural Homes where you will find thousands of
knowledgeable posts from experienced natural builders all over
the world. |
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'Evolver' (above right) is a sculpture erected to view
the panorama surrounding Zermatt, Switzerland. It was designed
and built in wood by a team of 2nd year architecture students
from the ALICE studio at EPFL in Lausanne. You can watch the
whole design and build process in the video above and see more pictures on
EVOLVER's project
website.
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Snail Cabin is a small Spanish house that was designed as
a temporary home for a couple with two small children. Later
it became a guest cabin after the main house was built. The
cob cabin has stone foundations, load-bearing cob walls and a
reciprocal frame roof. It cost around 6,000 Euro ($8,000) in
materials in 2007.
Like its inspiration work went at a snail’s pace, because
about twenty tons of earth, wood, sand and stone was carried
in barrows, buckets and on hard working backs.
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The
tiny house,
called the Fibonacci Treehouse, is in Spain. It's 25m2 (270 ft.sq.) with a small
kitchen and space for a bed and chairs. Once the frame of the
house was made off-site it took a small team of builders about 8
weeks to construct. It's a bit of a kid's paradise with 40m (130
ft) of rope bridges and a 23m (75 ft) slide. The building, by
Blue Forest,
is made from sustainably managed forest timbers.
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Poula-Line built her straw bale home in
Fri & Fro (Free and
Happy) ecoVillage in Egebjerg, Denmark. It's one of a collection of
unique straw bale homes in the village. Her home was inspired by a
conch shell (above) she found on a beach in Malaysia. Poula, lived in a
tiny straw bale house on her land
while she built her home. The structure of the home comes from its roundwood timber frame with a
complex and very beautiful reciprocal roof with
a seaweed cover like other Danish
seaweed homes. Here's some more about Poula's
straw bale house.
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As testimony to the flexibility and strength of bamboo, these
sea urchin shaped pods are the library and reception at
Bambu Indah,
John Hardy's hotel resort in Bali, Indonesia.
Bamboo is a grass that grows incredibly quickly.
Bamboo has a higher tensile strength than many alloys of steel and a higher
compressive strength than many mixtures of concrete. Unlike wood bamboo has no
knots allowing it to withstand more stress throughout the length of each stalk.
For a good overview of bamboo construction see
INBAR's
Bamboo in Construction (PDF 1.8Mb). |
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These are clay Obos of the Musgum people in Pouss, Cameroon. They
are designed to provide efficient cooling in the
baking heat with vents at the top of the building and small
entrances with no windows. The high domes collect the hot air, moving it away
from people sleeping at the bottom of the house keeping the
interior around 75F (24C). This is an ancient design based on the
catenary arch. Homes built in this way can be very slim and
use a minimum of material.
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This is the chrysalis of the
Monarch butterfly know as the wanderer in New Zealand there
this treehouse was inspired by its chrysalis. The walkway is built
using redwood and the fins and slats are built from sustainably
grown pine and poplar.
The structural fins uses glulam (glued laminated timber) which is
used as a sustainable replacement for steel.
The treehouse, a restaurant, was a marketing stunt by Yellow
where all the parts and services to create the treehouse were
found via yellow pages.
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This is one of the bamboo classrooms at the
Green School in Bali. The school is home to some wonderfully
organic shapes all made from bamboo. As well as its natural
buildings the school is 100% off-grid, powered by
solar panels and a
vortex generator that borrows water from the Ayung river.
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This is the
nautilus kindergarten in Lusan, Germany. The structure,
inspired by the nautilus, is made from untreated wood with an
infill of clay, old bricks, natural stones, sand and lime. The
building uses straw, reed and cotton fibres for insulation. The
basement gallery is built with de-barked tree trunks climbing to
the ceiling. The nautilus
contrasts the old concrete housing estate nearby where the children who attend the kindergarten live.
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