Natural Building with the heart and Kleiwerks International.

Waldorf School, Lago Puelo, Argentina.

A big part of natural building is often bringing people together as a community. Historically this has been how we built homes and there are still some strong examples of supportive communities like the ‘gassho-zukuri’ builders in Japan. Many of us have lost our tradition of community builds but Kleiwerks International has been bringing people together not only building homes using natural sustainable materials but also laying strong foundations for future natural building communities like the people of Lago Puelo in Argentina.

Cob chapel by Kleiwerks, USA

One of the earliest buildings Kleiwerks helped to build was the Waldorf School in Lago Puelo, Argentina. Here Max Edleson of Fire Speaking talks about how Kleiwerks brought together people from all over the world to help build the Waldorf School and how this became a catalysts for future natural building communities.

Max Edleson talks about Klewerks

Kleiwerks was founded by Janell Kapoor (below). Janell's natural building journey began when she joined a one week workshop lead by Ianto Evans of Cob Cottage Company in the early 90s. Later a teaching trip to Thailand showed her that there was a place for international work helping communities of natural builders to grow.

More recently Kleiwerks has recognised the strength women bring to community natural building projects and so WASI was formed. At the time WASI was just an acronym for Women of the Americas Sustainability Initiative but a project in Peru reviled that wasi is the Quechua word for home. Quechua is the language of the people who built Machu Picchu.

Here Janell talks about her natural building journey.


	Janell talks about her inspiration

The latest WASI project is a Women's Sanctuary (lower right) near Asheville in North Carolina, USA. This traditionally built timber frame cottage has slip-straw walls with earthen plasters and paints. It was built by eleven women during a WASI Apprenticeship.


	Building a slip-straw wall

Kleiwerks is a not-for-profit organisation that relies on the generosity of peoples time and financial support.

Janell Kapoor

Woman's Sanctuary, USA