Natural Buildings Workshop

Wed Jul 19 14:38:14 PDT 2000

Anyone who might be interested in playing in some mud for a week in August may
want to consider a trip to Tennessee.

Aug 11-20 Natural Buildings
Summertown, TN, The Farm community.

Learn to build a "Nebraska Style" strawbale cabin, basic techniques of cob
construction, timber frame, wattle and daub, stone, mud plasters, earth
floors,
living roofs, domes and compressed arches, rammed earth and earthbags, and
other examples of the natural bldg revolution. Instructors: Joe Kennedy,
Howard
Switzer, Albert Bates.

Ecological design and natural building topics:

Selecting and testing materials
Natural wall systems
Foundations and drainage
Passive solar design
Siting
Hybrid natural building design
Modeling and design
Roofing and waterproofing

Specific building systems to be covered will be:

Cob building
Rammed earth bags
Adobe and other earth building techniques
Natural paints and plasters
Wattle and daub
Rubble trench foundations
Straw-bale construction
Light-clay construction
Through two hands on sessions each day, students will gain practical
experience
in integrating a number of simple and valuable technologies into one working
solution.  

Joseph F. Kennedy, principal of Living Earth Design and Planning, and a
founder
of Builders Without Borders, will be the natural building course instructor
for
our 10-day course in August.  Joe received degrees in Architecture from the
University of California at Berkeley (B.A.) and the Southern California
Institute of Architecture (M.Arch.), with an additional degree in
International
Peace Studies for the University of Notre Dame (M.A.). Involved in ecological
design and construction for fourteen years, he has worked with such design
pioneers as Persian architect Nader Khalili and Welsh architect Christopher
Day
on a number of innovative projects that have expanded the boundaries of
ecological architecture. He co-designed a space station habitability module
for
NASA; participated in a National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored ceramic
house
project: studied ancient stone towers on the island of Sardinia with
Earthwatch; and co-created a site-built earth art project with Japanese
artist,
Nobuho Nagasawa, in Prague. In addition he has designed a teacher-training
center for basic needs in South Africa, where he helped build several
prototype
structures based on ecological design principles, most notably at Tholego, an
ecovillage training center and model ecovillage near Rustenburg. An associate
producer on The Straw Bale Solution video, Joe recently edited The Art of
Natural Building for NetWorks Productions, authored the Earthbag chapter for
Alternative Construction, and has produced a grade 6-8 curriculum about
ecological design and natural building entitled Homeward Bound.  He has
recently
returned from a nine-month research and teaching tour which brought him to
different innovative projects in Argentina, Brazil, England, Ireland and South
Africa. He now directs the summer apprenticeship program at the Ecovillage
Training Center in Tennessee.

Howard Switzer is an architect with more than 30 years experience in building
solar homes and working with natural, ecological, and recycled materials and
construction techniques. He has studied with many other natural builders. His
architecture firm designs and builds many straw and native material structures
for residential and business clients in the Southeastern US.

Albert Bates is author of nine books on energy, environment and law, and two
films on ecovillages, and currently serves as Regional Secretary for the
Americas for the Global Ecovillage Network. He has lectured and universities
and government agencies and worked on natural buildings, village
infrastructure, and permaculture landscapes on 6 continents.

Course fees ($800) include tuition, meals, and lodging. Prices, dates and
instructors subject to change. $50 discount for payment a month in advance or
for registering a friend. Non-refundable deposit to register. Contact us for
scholarship or work-trade arrangements.

Meals at the training center generally include 3 gourmet vegan meals
(breakfast, lunch and dinner) and beverage and fruit breaks each full course
day.

About The Farm

The Farm is one of the largest and best known intentional communities in the
U.S. Located on 1750 wooded acres in south central Tennessee, it is home to
approximately 200 persons today. Founded in 1971 with a spiritual
commitment to
simple living and self-reliance, The Farm has pioneered a wide range of social
and physical technologies appropriate to low-cost, high satisfaction community
living. This tradition of entrepreneurship and progressive social change is
embodied in Your Inn at The Farm. The Inn provides comfortable accomodations
for participatory training in all aspects of village design and social
organization for planetary transformation. The surrounding Farm community
offers examples of solar building design, micro-enterprise, mushroom
cultivation for food, medicine and bioremediation, large scale composting and
garden production, and regenerative hardwood forest management.

Our courses will be useful for people with varying levels of experience, from
backyard gardeners and self-build homebuilders to design and educational
professionals.

Natural Buildings Course
Ecovillage Training Center
P.O. Box 90, Summertown TN, USA 38483-0090
* Phone 931-964-4474
* Fax: (country code +) 931-964-2200
* Email: ecovillage at thefarm.org
* http://www.thefarm.org/etc/
-- 
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that
ever has."
                                                  Margaret Mead

______________________________________________
* Ecovillage Training Center                    http://www.thefarm.org/etc
* The Farm                                                     
http://ena.ecovillage.org/
* POB 90 Summertown TN 38483-0090 USA           http://dx.gaia.org/
* Tel: 931-964-4474 Fax: 931-964-2200           http://www.i4at.org/
__________________*__________________

A whole systems immersion experience of ecovillage living, together with
classes of instruction, access to information, tools and resources, and
on-site
and off-site consulting and outreach experiences.
_______________________________________

Santa Barbara
Permaculture Network
224 E. Figueroa St, #C
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805/962-2571
sbpcnet at silcom.com  
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