Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

natural builDing in tHailanD 71
they are unable to procure an ID card. This means they are technically
not ‘Thai’, and therefore unable to qualify for social welfare or benefits from
the government.
When bamboo can no longer be used, and concrete and wood become
increasingly expensive, it seems that owning a strong, secure house built by
one’s own hands becomes ever more out of reach.
In 2002, the origination of the Mud House Project opened a new
vision and new solution to Thai society. The Project began to publicize and
support the notion of building one’s own home using simple local materials
with community participation. The Project’s main strategy was to conduct
workshops at locations throughout Thailand using participatory learning
processes. Although the ‘mud house’
might not be the right solution for all,
it surely can be a viable alternative
for certain groups in certain contexts.
From the very beginning, the Mud
House Project focused on grassroots
community development. It soon
became very interesting, however, to
discover that most of the people who
are interested in the mud house come
from the city. Perhaps this is because
people who live in the city feel distant
from Nature and long for its soothing
touch. Unfortunately, the mud house
is not a very viable solution for urban
areas. The combination of a fastpaced
lifestyle, no available local
materials, and no supporting legal structure, make building mud houses in
the city not only against the law, but also very expensive, since all material
needs to be purchased and imported, and outside laborers and craftsmen
need to be hired.
In rural areas, the majority of people have grown less appreciative
of the graceful simplicity of the mud house. Many villagers have been
changing their life-style from the old sustainable ways, and now strive for
what money can buy; and in the construction market, that usually means
a concrete house.
When I first started working with the Mud House Project, I had an
opportunity to travel around the country. Things were so very different from
what I had learned in school. One of the villagers shared with me that,
nowadays, the corporate chain vendors have infiltrated everywhere, even
into the most remote of areas. They have everything you could want up for
sale, such as vegetables and fruits – and even western-style instant food and
factory-produced snacks such as candy and sodas. The villagers prefer to
buy these consumer goods even though they can grow some of them in their
own back yard.
Mud house workshop
with monk in Laos.