Clay has outstanding vapor-diffusion capacities, absorbs odors, does not collect static and dander, is mold resistant, has an extremely low embodied energy, and is locally available in abundance. With clay based building materials we can make buildings, tromme walls, floors, fences, benches, ovens, wallpaper glues, plasters and fine finish veneers. Learn about the ranges of applications for clay based building, how they can improve your built environment and how they can contribute to LEED projects large and small, as well as DIY projects! As part of the Center for Green Technology’s Green Tech University Program, one can earn credits toward AIA/CES: 2
Introduction to Clay Based Building Materials
DATE: 7/18/2009
TIME: 1:00-3:00 PM
SPEAKER: Anna Wolfson, Wolfson Earthen Finishes
LOCATION: Chicago Center for Green Technology, 445 N. Sacramento Blvd.
Building a Backyard Cob Oven
Learn how to build a cob bread or pizza oven
using clay, sand and straw. Continue reading ‘Cob Oven at Nisse Farm, August 22nd, 2009′
What do you want to learn? Where? When? Alongside whom? Your family, co-workers, friends, students, neighbors? Let’s talk. We would love to further your experiences in Natural Art and Construction.
Would you like to get your girlfriends together and sit in a vat of clay? Would you like to build a house? Just a bird house? Hows about a back yard meditation or yoga sanctuary? Gazebo with seats heated from the cob oven sculpted into graceful forms… no dream is too outlandish, small, or large for us to entertain. Please, get your drawing book out, pour a glass of wine or tea, and get thinking! Then call!
If your are planning a Natural Building project of your own, and would like W.E. Artisans to lead a workshop for any portion of it, we would love to help. Straw baling, cob mixing, finishing interior or exterior coats on your walls, are all examples of workshops we can lead. We can lead the design charette with your family, organization, or friends at the onset of your project as well.
Please Contact Us with your idea and your visions of a workshop, and the dialogue shall begin.
If you’re interested in attending a public workshop of ours to gain more experience in Natural Building, please sign up for our RSS Feed on the Contact Us page.
Volunteers for Black Oaks Center’s Savanna site created an elegant and extremely sturdy entrance gate and garden wall at two weekend workshops held in fall 2008. Participants built earth bag walls during the first weekend, then covered them with cob the next weekend. Many people camped out on the beautiful Savanna sharing stories, fun, and food with other natural building enthusiasts.
Continue reading ‘Black Oaks Earth Bag and Cob Workshops’
Volunteers built a Straw Bale building at Nisse Farm in Manteno, Illinois in August 2008. This post and beam structure was wrapped in straw bales for supreme insulation, and coated in earthen plaster, or cob, to protect the bales…more->
