Page 24 - October 2015 Green Builder Magazine

ALTERNATIVE CONSTRUCTION

22

The New
Natural Building

Designers and builders are refining natural building systems for
performance and speed of construction.

EARTHEN CONSTRUCTION IS ancient. Rammed earthwww.greenbuildermedia.com 10.2015
structures in China can be dated to as early as 5000
BC. Adobe buildings erected in the desert Southwest of IMAGE CREDIT: GREG MADEEN
the United States still stand after centuries. In Europe,
400-hundred-year-old timber-framed, wattle-and-daub Mud Stud Wall. Hand-packing cob (a mixture of sand, clay, straw
structures are still inhabited. In fact, the connection with time- and water) into a stud-framed wall adds thermal mass, sound
honored practices is what draws many people to natural building insulation and fireproofing.
systems.
These systems can claim many advantages over modern He spent many years developing techniques to increase the speed
construction. The materials are often locally sourced. They’re of construction—and consequently, to reduce costs. More recently,
non-toxic. The resulting structures are strong, fireproof and he has changed tactics and begun developing Watershed Block: a
aesthetically pleasing. And yet, most of these methods have been unitized material that doesn’t require teaching old dogs new tricks.
pushed to the fringe, at least in the U.S. Why?
Part of the problem is perception. Many people think of natural BUILDING A REPUTATION
materials as the domain of barefoot hippies, building weirdly Even though the methods may be relegated to the fringes, many
shaped organic houses without blueprints. Some people don’t architects and builders committed to natural materials have forged
“trust” construction methods that employ natural materials,
assuming they are stuck back in some unenlightened century.
“One of the biggest barriers to wider adoption is misinformation,”
says Colorado-based architect Greg Madeen. “For example, people
say, ‘straw bale rots.’ Yet wood is cellulose, just as straw bale is
cellulose.”
David Easton, engineer turned rammed earth expert, calls the
effort to push natural materials onto a skeptical, conservative
industry a “Sisyphean struggle.” But in a presentation titled “The
Virtues of Earth,” Easton explains another ironic turn that has held
up the mainstreaming of rammed earth.
Once architects began to design rammed earth buildings, “it
became accidentally expensive,” he says. “It went from rough,
rugged and affordable to sophisticated, refined and expensive.”