Article in Voices Sunday Nov 5, 2000 newspress by Gary Duncan Smartshelter with intro added left out of article

Wed Nov 8 06:40:36 PST 2000

GARY DUNCAN FROM SMARTSHELTER NETWORK
Natural Building in the American Southwest Slide Show and Talk

Nov 8: Wed Ojai...7pm Happy Valley School Auditorium, contact Dave White,
Ojai Permaculture Guild, 805-646-9809; artdetour at mac.com.Zalk Theatre 8585 
HWY 150,
Nov 9: Thursday Santa Barbara..... , 7:00pm at the Santa Barbara Public
Library Main Branch Downtown, Faulkner Gallery, donation $3, contact 962-2571
or sbpcnet at silcom.com. The Sustainability Project,Cohearts, Mac's Solar, 
Community Environmental Council
Nov. 10: Friday San Luis Obispo... 7pm at the Community Room at the SLO 
Library
co-sponsored by HopeDance (544-9663), Sustainable Building Council, CC 
Permaculture Guild
and the Canaries of the Central Coast, Future Electric

Positive Solutions with Natural Building Margie Bushman

Smart Shelter Network
Positive Solutions with Natural Building Introduction

Last April South Coast Permaculture Guild did a presentation on Earthships 
as a part of our monthly meeting at the Community Environmental Council in 
Santa Barbara, California. In the audience was Gary Duncan, from Smart 
Shelter Network in southwestern Colorado, and we were lucky enough to spend 
time with him before he left Santa Barbara, and learn of his immense 
knowledge of natural and alternative building design.

Strawbale, cob, and adobe. We've all heard about them, maybe even dreamed 
of owning one, but what exactly is involved in building one of these non- 
conventional structures? Since they have been around for so long, why don't 
we see more them?
    Gary Duncan had many of these same questions and a curiosity to learn 
more. He began Smart Shelter Network as a result of an illness caused from 
many years of working with toxic building materials. He had also observed 
how many alternative building structures were being built in his corner of 
southwestern Colorado, and conceived the idea of forming a network to share 
and exchange knowledge on this vast subject. This network would not only 
share information on how to build, but explain what was involved in 
financing, insuring and permitting these structures. This wonderful vision 
became a reality and now the
network provides advocacy and education to the public, code officials, 
bankers, material suppliers, and the media. It is composed of members who 
form tasks forces to learn about specific issues, such as water catchement, 
ferro cement, strawbale, bamboo, pressed earth block and more.
         Gary will share his experiences in an upcoming lecture and slide 
show (see ad in this issue for specific details) with over 3000 slides of 
documented case studies he has collected over the last six years..

**************************
POSITIVE BUILDING SOLUTIONS  by gary duncan
Where’s the positive way out? As news of the increasing destruction of our 
planet¹s environment escalates, more and more people are seeing that 
effective personal action is not only advisable.but absolutely necessary.
Gandhi kept turning our attention, often focused on other people’s 
action,back to the real origin of responsibility back to ourselves.
Pro-active environmentalism is necessary. We need to be pressuring the 
electric energy producers, developers and auto manufacturers to turn the 
course of global warming and resource depletion around.
But the lion¹s share of effective changes will come not from those who 
produce commodities, but from changing the way we consume them. This is 
called demand side management.
Of all the purchases we make in a life-time, the buildings we live and work 
in pack the largest environmental wallop we finance as consumers. They are 
responsible for the loss of old-growth forests.
They are heated and lit with electricity...the number one contributor 
world-wide to global climate change. 30% of these  harbor toxins sufficient 
to produce environmental illness in their dwellers.(according to the EPA 
and World Health 
Organization)

There are a couple of beacons of hope on the horizon. Some of them are 
delightful surprises, which is often characteristic of profound solutions 
to perplexing problems.
Bucky Fuller¹s concept of “Synergy” stated the seemingly impossible. He 
insisted that solutions could be found.Solutions which will produce more 
energy than they require to create. Strawbale Hybrid Solar Design is just 
such a solution. A natural home built of soil and bales not only reduces 
the slaughter of
trees, it produces super-insulated, sound-proof, affordable homes for those 
with the spirit to step out of the ordinary and build one.

After you¹ve felt the interior ambience of these 'Natural Homes'. Of which 
I¹ve been through a couple of hundred now, you realize Bucky¹s synergy 
extends to the subjective and spiritual realm as well. These homes feel and 
live on levels impossible to describe until you¹ve felt them and definitely 
far above that of
conventional dwellings.

The second irony of natural homes has to do with their cost and the 
attitude of their owners. We have found here in Western Colorado that 
people who go the extra mile in considering the environmental impacts of 
their homes have a definite tendency to wind up in them at 10-30% less cost 
than those who
3are selfish and don¹t care. We can¹t explain that, but we know for a fact 
that it¹s a verifiable pattern.Much of the experimental era in Natural 
Building is over. The cutting edge explorers willing to tackle raw desert 
and isolation to create this new architecture have already laid the 
foundation for the most profound change in the history of the American 
Building Industry. There is no longer any doubt that
agricultural waste products and soil can save our forests and produce 
better buildings. Load Bearing Strawbale and hybrid designs are tried, 
tested, and in many jurisdictions, already approved. These techniques are 
now spreading from new construction projects to application in retrofit of 
existing homes.

These are techniques you can use today in the house you already live in. 
You don¹t need to wait to be able to afford a new one.
There are several hotbeds across the nation where natural building is 
flourishing. The area of Southwestern Colorado from Aspen to Pagosa Springs 
(roughly equivalent to the area from San Luis Obispo to San Diego) hosts 
200 known strawbale buildings (of which 28 are load-bearing), 50 
earthships, 2000 adobe structures and healthy smatterings of rammed earth, 
cob, poured adobe, non-
toxic and reclaimed structures. This is the highest documented per-capita 
utilization of sustainable building techniques in the United States.

In the years to come, the availability of healthy homes(especially for 
those of us with environmental illnesses) and the right to build 
sustainably may depend on entities similar to the Smart Shelter Network 
which documents, studies, photographs and advocates natural building in 
this mountain area with
bankers, insurers, builders, code officials and politicians. It acts as an 
independent, business-based to support sustainable building, in sharp 
contrast to the lobby interests of the multi-national corporations who 
produce manufactured building products and write the building codes.

Southern California already has some of the ingredients necessary in the 
California Strawbale Association , Sustainability Project, the Green 
Building Alliance in Santa Barbara, the Sustainable Building Council of the 
Central Coast and Ecohome Network located in Los Angeles and South Coast

Permaculture Guild and it's related guilds in Southern California. It has 
an arsenal of talent in people like  Architect Jim Bell who brought us 
Santa Barbara¹s one of first strawbale project and Dennis Allen of Allen 
and Associates and Wes Roe and Margie Bushman of the Santa Barbara 
Permaculture Network.

Networks like Smart Shelter take natural building into the business realm, 
creating and supporting jobs and a professional class dedicated to 
sustainability. It establishes credibility with politicians, financiers and 
code officials by objectively studying and documenting large numbers of 
natural building techniques. Entering it¹s 5th year in Colorado, the Smart 
Shelter service area does not contain a single code jurisdiction which does 
not support strawbale construction. This works and the reason why is that 
it bases its resources and advocacy on the professional building community 
as well as the person building or remodeling their own home.

On Nov 9 Smart Shelter and the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network will 
present at the Faulkner Library Santa Barbara Public Library at 7pm 
donation $3 an1 1/2 hour slide show on natural building in Western 
Colorado...the majestic scenery, the million dollar strawbale homes, the 
converted WWII
quonset huts with adobe sun rooms an armchair tour of some of the most 
vibrant natural architecture in America and the characters who create it.

On Sat, Nov 11 Smart Shelter will produce a half-day workshop geared toward 
creating a Network of this type in Southern California (1-6 pm, CEC Gildea 
Resource Center, Santa Barbara).

For slide show and workshop information <sbpcnet at silcom.com>.

For information about Smart Shelter Network www.smartshelter.com.

By Special Request of the speaker this event will be “FRAGRANCE FREE”

Margie Bushman is a organizer and board member of the Santa Barbara 
Permaculture Network, she has been active for over 3 years bringing 
programs and teachers to Santa Barbara.

Gary Duncan is a fourth generation native of Western Colorado. His academia 
background is in mathematics ,physics and architectural design. He has 35 
years of building experience, forming Smart Shelter Network after 
experiencing an illness caused from years of working with toxic building 
materials, an observing the unsustainability of his profession

CONTACT Margie Bushman at 962-2571 or sbpcnet at silcom.com

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

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