Natural Building Extravaganza

Natural Building Extravaganza attracts green crowd

Janell, a participant in the Natural Building Extravaganza in Asheville, works with a clay mixture. Photo by Georgellen Agner Goss.

May 22, 2011 - Builders mixing clay, sand, water and straw with bare feet: it seems more like something you’d see Egyptian slaves doing in “The Ten Commandments” than a scene from a construction site in the modern city of Asheville.

Still, it’s a perfectly reasonable activity if you happen to be part of the Natural Building Extravaganza , a three-week series of workshops that attracted people determined to change the world by putting green principles into practice.

From April 24-May 14, Natural Building Extravaganza participants — who lived in tents — learned how to:

• lay stone foundations and walls;

• make and lay bricks;

• use permaculture ideals to store and utilize rainwater;

• build an inexpensive, highly efficient cooking system from a metal drum and clay;

• build with bamboo, wood, and wattle and daub;

• build or face buildings with cob and plaster.

Cob is a natural building material made of sand, clay, water, earth, and straw. It is similar to adobe, daub, or the material that is compressed into bricks. {continued}