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