C.O.B: Natural Building Workshop Summary
Magical Farm Tasmania, January 2022.
By Dr Demeter
A Natural Building workshop took place at Magical Farm 11th – 16thJanuary, 2022. A lovely group of people convened to co-create an office for Magical Farm, in partnership with Clare Aston’s Elemental Earth Building. The workshop was more like a ‘retreat’ - a beautiful coming together of people to learn new skills, share food and stories. A convening of people to share dialogue and create new ways of being. We explored Cob building (building with clay and stay and sand) and clay-straw slip technique (see photos below).
Hakim Bey, American Poet & Anarchist describes Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs) as short-lived spaces which subvert formal structures of control. Our Natural Building retreat was a place for people to reflect on ways in which they want to build differently. This process also stimulated further dialogue and discussions about ways to transform everyday life that has become so commodified.
Why Natural Building?
As Naomi Klein puts in her book “The Shock Doctrine” – the free market has come to dominate the world. In relation to building…large monopoly renovation stores and developing companies with cookie cut designs is the dominant way that we build. As a consequence we are becoming further distanced from using our hands and skills to create our shelters and this in itself has significant ripple on…
Guy Debord describes in his book Society of Spectacle a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, dealing with issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenisation, and mass media. In relation to building…a building is not just a building – it is nested in a home, community, village, however this is becoming further from the case as suburbs and towns are planned to further disconnect people with place. One issue is the fact that most of our homes these days are designed via the individual title system. Eco-villages that can embrace connection and diversity are a niche form of building development.
Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality states that “Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim, kindness, or skill of another are called underdeveloped, while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all-encompassing store catalogue are called advanced”. In relation to building here – our values as a society are upside down and we need to bring ‘heart’, ‘head’, ‘hands’ and body into our way of building and living. This is also going to be about localising our economies and building with what materials are around us - vernacular building.
These authors and thousands more have scripted the same critique and message for decades with regards to their concerns for industrialisation and commodification of everyday life. We are now in a position for a multitude of reasons (Climate, Covid, Crisis of global economy, Matters of Equity, Decolonisation , living in virtual realities etc) where we need to shift gears and redesign in the realm of our everyday – for the better. Natural Building is a great way to start this process!
In this brief article I would like to share three simple nested ideas to reflect on our Natural Building workshop/retreat at Magical Farm: Introducing C.O.B.
C: Convivial communities
Convivial communities refers to people creating something autonomously outside the dominant system in a joyous and interdependent way. Put simply acting differently to the ‘industrial model’ of being and doing.
Natural Building was an empowering experience. Prior to the workshop I would have told people that I do not know how to build – now I can. My two eldest children also know how to build a shelter for themselves – a great school holiday learning.
I can see that Natural building is one significant way to claim back power over our everyday life. If people can build their own shelters and not have to rely on commodity building, we can begin to shift gears away from unmanageable mortgages. We can also put an end to drip feeding large corporations to sell us back commodified versions of shelter.
Natural Building offers a model that allows for people-to-help-people. Sharing a village experience in a powerful TAZ for a short period of time and supporting each other to learn, create shelter and in a joyous and caring way.
The community created during our retreat felt good – yoga in the mornings, campfires in the evenings, sharing making of meals, sharing stories whilst we stomped on cob and built walls together and teaching each other new skills. We were creating more than just walls – we were creating friendships and shared experiences and at the same time becoming a community of practice with an essential skill for sustaining life.
Nested idea 1: Our Community / Village.
2. O: Oikos
Reimagining the concept of the home is a big task, but Oikos is a great start! The ‘eco’ of economy & ecology derives from oikos – meaning home – that which sustains life. The family property / the house are also original meanings of oikos. The meaning of economy therefore derives from basic elements of our everyday life and how we organise ourselves in this way (‘nomy ’ means management of).
Gibson-Graham feminist economic theorists describe ‘community economies’ as new ways to engage in living and working - in diverse forms of exchange. To them ‘community’ refers to the active ongoing negotiation of interdependence with all life forms, human and non-human.
Economies are therefore not simply about monetary exchange – and never were! In a community economy there are diverse ways to create forms of exchange such as: coops, natural building in festival (like our retreat!), bartering, volunteering, gifts and many more.
Natural building as a process plants the seed for us to reconceive the original meaning of the concept of Oikos – and in turn reimagine the way we are living now in place.
Nested idea 2: Our home.
3. B: Boogie & our Bodies
To conclude Natural Building is tactile, connected to nature (literally you dig a hole in your back garden, and use this clay - this is called vernacular building) and fun! It is an embodied experience involving our head, heart and hands – but most importantly our body! There were a few moments throughout the retreat in the late afternoon usually – where we cracked open a cold drink – turned up the radio and boogied as we built. Cob making requires you to stomp on clay and sand to make it into the right composition (similar process to old ways of making wine!).
Nested idea 3: Our body.
Summary
In summary I am a big fan of C.O.B & natural building – it is a holistic way to claim back a seriously commodified aspect of our everyday life.
Thank you to everyone who took part in the retreat, as participants and volunteers. A big thank you to Clare Aston for her superb and passionate teachings.
End.
Any questions or queries into our natural building workshops please email info@magicalfarm.org
Photography by Emily Samuels-Ballantyne
