Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

78 Designing ecological Habitats
ment of alternative builders and a cross-fertilizing environment of culturally
creative people. 2 While this movement typically seems to attract ecologicallyconscious
people that are searching for alternatives to our destructive modern
practices, building with strawbales is also attracting the attention of people
with no ‘green’ background at all, simply because of its surprising advantages:
“Hey, is this what’s possible with ecological standards?” they might be
thinking. “Let me have a home like that, too!”
Last but not least, natural materials are an invitation to creativity
and playful work. With a firm basis in professional design and sound
construction techniques, there remains a lot of space for open-ended artistic
expression: from playing with the motion of rounded corners or other shapes
to moulding beautiful pieces of art spontaneously at the time of applying
the earthen plasters on strawbale walls. Herein lies a strong healing aspect
for any human being – and whoever has had the opportunity to live in a
beautiful self-built house knows how deeply satisfying it can be.
Reconnecting with NATuRE
Choosing to build with strawbales and clay becomes a personal process of
looking at the world more holistically, with a consciousness that allows one
to step out of familiar mainstream paths with their associated separation
from Nature. It is often a rational and emotional choice to live surrounded
and protected by natural materials as a sensitive human being, a being with a
physical and emotional body that says ‘yes’ to a shell that lives and breathes
too. Healing our relation with the earth-dust (a shaman friend of mine would
even say ‘stardust’) from which we are made will synergetically contribute to
the healing of the planet as well as ourselves.
Living in rooms made out of natural materials provides a major condition
for becoming and staying healthier. Strawbale walls are never cold or hot.
Earthen plasters are famous for absorbing odour and regulating humidity;
they even have shown a high capacity to protect from electro-magnetic
radiation. And touching the smooth surface of finished clay plaster can
become quite an intimate sensory experience with Mother Earth...
Conclusion
Constructing with strawbales is a future-building, individually and
collectively mind-shifting, and culturally creative practice. It contributes to
protecting our natural habitats, fostering regionally resilient economies, and
providing healthy and beautiful environments for human beings to live in.
Compared to actual mainstream building methods, this is still a relatively
unknown art form. But if we look at all the characteristics of this ‘ancientmodern’
technology and its flexibility to be combined with many other
sustainable technologies – social, physical, as well as spiritual – I can see its
promising potential as being one of the widespread construction standards
of our near future, especially for human beings that are changing the world.