SunRay Kelley is, quite frankly, the man. If you are not familiar with his natural building work (or ‘evolutionary architecture’, as he calls it), do yourself the favor and check out this recent New York Times article with slideshow.
SunRay has been featured in several of Lloyd Kahn’s books, and his work has recently gaining more mainstream attention.
Go SunRay!
Photo credit: The New York Times
2012 was a whirlwind of a building season. Organizing and running two natural building workshops, building a timber frame house with hand tools, meeting deadlines, unbelievable heat…
Despite all of it, we accomplished an amazing amount of work. Again, huge thanks to our awesome building workshop crews, and every volunteer that picked up a hammer (or a really heavy timber) in our crazy journey. Here I present a recap of our 2012 Strawtron building season. In the coming weeks I will ‘fill in the blanks’ where I have not provided online documentation of our timber frame & straw bale house, so look out!
Before you take your shovel to the dirt and start digging to build your own home, before you even take pen to paper in sketching designs, I advise you to read Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language.
If you want to understand what makes a good building good, and a particular space work well, this book will teach you the “pattern language” derived from timeless architectural problems and their solutions. A Pattern Language presents compelling design practices and ideas that will make your space more functional and pleasant.
Turtle Island Preserve is an educational center that focuses on primitive and traditional living skills, including natural building. They have been operating for 26 years. Recently, they have been subject to a harsh government raid for apparent code violations.
Once again, the government demonstrates complete hypocrisy and hatred in the face of positive change, and my compassion goes out to Turtle Island.
Read their urgent letter below, and support them by signing this petition!
Throughout the process of building my cob house “Gobcobatron”, I documented the entire process of its construction online here at The Year of Mud, demonstrating the process I went through to build my first home. It has been a rewarding experience for me, and the feedback and learning experience has been wonderful.
This year, since beginning the construction of my new timber frame and straw bale home, time has been particularly scant, as the timeline was even more compressed and deadlines were many, thus a less detailed documentation effort during the building season throughout the various construction stages.
However, this winter I have plans to retrace my steps, to present how to build a timber frame and straw bale house.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
