Beautiful living rooms in natural homes around the world, part:

The living room is where people go to relax, sit, stretch out, read and socialise. It's often the centre piece of the house. A place that tells your visitors who you are, your style and taste. A place that must cater for all sorts of different people's shapes and sizes which should be reflected in the seats on offer; Alexander's design pattern No.251. Many of these living rooms have seats built in to the structure of the building but also have occasional chairs to add variety to the room. A living room looks at its most homely if, as Christopher Alexander recommends you, "never furnish any place with chairs that are identically the same. Choose a variety of different chairs, some big, some small, some softer than others... some old, some new".
 

Above is an adobe and cob home in San Pablo Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico. Many of the windows in the home are round and much of the furniture is made from cob. Bottom right of the picture shows a cob staircase leading to a sleeping loft (shown in our natural building group).

In 2011 Atulyak Bingham found herself living alone in a tent on her land in the Turkish hills. There was no power or running water. She lives completely off-grid. Water was her biggest challenge but by using every surface to harvest rain she has a reservoir of over 10,000 litres.

Atulyak's earthbag home took six weeks to build and cost about €4,500 (5,000 USD) to make. Nearly all that money went on labour, the roof rafters and her beautiful juniper floorboards.

This beautiful home in Devon, England called Seagull House, was traditionally framed in oak. It was converted from a barn in 1987 and designed by architect Roderick James who founded Carpenter Oak where you can see more pictures of the oak framed house.

A traditionally framed building like this can last for 500+ years or more. Peak acorn production for an oak tree is around 80  to 120 years. It takes about 150 years before an oak tree is ready to use in construction.

This is Veronica living room. The traditional homes where Veronica lives are built with rammed earth. It the earthen tradition she decided to build her own space after stumbling across cob via Sundog School of Natural Building and then Natural Homes. She got a copy of 'The Hand Sculpted House' and just started digging! The space inside is just under 20 m2 (215 sq.ft.) with the addition of a composting loo.

Veronica's home is part of the natural homes for rent collection.

This is a late 17th century 'Mud and Stud' cottage in the beautiful Lincolnshire Wolds of England. You can find Mud and Stud homes in Jamestown, Virginia, USA built there by British colonists.

Mud and stud is similar to 'wattle and daub' but the mud (clay, sand and straw) is supported by vertical riven lathes (riven: split with the grain) nailed to horizontal rails between the posts of an elm frame.

This home is part of the natural homes for rent collection.

This is Ianto and Linda's living room in their beautiful cob home in Oregon, USA. They run the Cob Cottage Company. 

Their window is a nice example of a low sill window place [Pattern No.180] one of the varieties of window identified by Alexander's Pattern Language. The correct height for such a window place, where you can draw up a chair to enjoy the view, is 12-14 inches, about 30-35cm. The sense of enclosure is not derived from the window but rather the chair which ideally will have a high back and arm rests.