In this 4 day course, we will aim at re-establishing confidence that building a house, while it is an art, is not rocket science, and surely does not require you to get indebted for the next 20 or 30 years!

In the short list of our fundamental needs, building our homes stands right next to growing our food. More than a liberating experience, it is a deeply enjoyable process, one that is shared with a collective of likeminded friends ready to cope with a bit of physical work. Natural homes also: have lower carbon footprint (can even be positive), are designed to your taste, are more comfortably suited to your climate, incredibly cheaper, etc…

There are of course many many ways and decision to make when it comes to design, choosing material, site, etc… We will cover some of that to help you ponder the most important aspects (climate, passive designs, cob vs strawbale vs concrete vs hempcrete vs sandbags…) and explore some amazing home designs throughout the world. For the most curious of you, we can also do a quick class on how to use google sketchup, a wonderful tool for designing your house before you start building.

Then we’ll get our hands dirty for some practical activities where we’ll teach you the basic skills you need: the tools you’ll be using, the technics to mix your material, how to build a straight wall, how to do nice finishings… 

We will play with making mud-bricks, building with cob and/or adobe, using sand bags, and much more!