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Natural Building is the art of cooperating with the environment to build dwellings. Materials used are locally available, usually of organic nature, such as sand, rocks and clay, but since garbage has become part of the earth, it's a natural element. Urbanite, which is broken up poured cement is a natural building material, used often for foundations and stem walls. Natural Buildings are cool in the summer and cozy in the winter because they are built with an understanding of weather, the sun's patterns and they tend to be small, efficient, leaving more room outside to play. I learned natural building from Ianto Evans of the Cob Cottage Company in Oregon. He designed the building at left, called the East-West House. It was built over several workshops at the school in Coquille, Oregon. If you came to this site to find out more about natural building, please send me email. I'll talk your ear off, send you to workshops, sell you books, show you pictures, send you to beautiful inspiring sites and perhaps we will build or design something together for you. As an urban dweller, I would like to inspire my fellow urbanites to stay in the city, enjoy its culture and wealth of resources and talents, and if you need that cottage retreat in the country, build an illegal one in your backyard! I can help. Are you in the San Francisco Bay Area and looking for resources for natural building? For urban stuff, I'd love to tell you about these friends of mine who run a natural building school and custom building service called Vertical Clay. They live in a run-down fixer-upper on a dog-patch street in a city just north of Oakland called El Sobrante. They are remodeling a back-yard cottage with light straw clay as an insulator--and got code approval from their county! Here are a few random urban specific links for inspiration:
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