Living Architecture Centre

July 2011 Sheltermaker

Posted July 6th, 2011 by Peter Cowman and filed in Sheltermaker

Tags: econospace, EconoSpaceMaking, living architecture centre, low cost self build shelter, Sheltermaker

Solar Powered Sheltermaker

This is the LAC’s new home located in the town of Dunolly, central Victoria, Australia.
We’ve just had a bank of solar panels installed, feeding solar generated electricity into the grid.

The house is strawbale, passive solar, designed and built by Alanna before I was even dreamed of. Now it is home to us both as we plot our way forwards in this rapidly changing world. Even on a frosty morning (it is winter here) the internal temperature never varies much. Very impressive.

We can walk into the centre of Dunolly in 5 minutes where banking, internet, public transport, toilets and postal services are available as well as a mobile library. We get ‘Daly Dollars’ at the hardware shop when we spend more than $15. There is also an excellent bakery in town!

Daly Dollar (The poor reproduction is to prevent counterfeiting. Ed.)

During the Gold Rush Dunolly had a population over 30,000. Nowadays there are less than 1000 residents and there is no evidence of any kind of rush!

The parcel of land we are living on is almost 3 acres and is perfectly flat. Alanna and I are in the process of developing a plan for the property based on the concept of small mortgage-free houses with integrated food production and waste management facilities.

Integrating geomancy, permaculture and living architecture is already producing interesting results. What’s emerging is the clear need to address the impasse which currently bedevils many ‘sustainable’ initiatives.

This is where things are a bit stuck right now – lodged in Transition Land, stuck between past and future times. Luckily this place is easily accessible and has a name – it’s called the ‘Here & Now.’

In the Here & Now everything is possible. Dreams can rendezvous with reality and space can indulge its love of time.

At the moment we are preparing for the spring planting – setting out and constructing raised beds for potatoes, millet, squash, silverbeet and whatever else takes our fancy.

Growing food and constructing shelter love the Here & Now. Before you know it you’ve been sucked in and its lunch time. Nothing for it but to satisfy your hunger with some greens from the garden and some homemade bread.

This kind of simplicity is scary. Your entire life flashes before you repeatedly. Its like discovering oneself naked inside a freshly baked world.

The shelter component of the ‘Dunolly Plan’ (working title) will be informed by the experience of constructing the mini-EconoSpace.

Mini-EconoSpace Update

The mini-EconoSpace has now been painted with ochre paints which I made under the (remote) direction of my good friend Gerard Greene. The walls look good enough to eat.

The Swedish Mud paint on the exterior woodwork is particularly enticing.

I’ve also constructed a lean-to at the back using the type of truss which I have developed on the Irish EconoSpaces.

The trusses are connected to the roof rafters and to the wall frames. This eliminates the need for a post to support the outer edge of the roof – a real bonus.

These cantilevered trusses span 2 meters!

More lean-to with trusses in Leitrim … you can clearly see here the benefit of not having posts in the way!

I’ll put a laundry sink under this lean-to and a compost toilet.

This charming little building has so far cost less than $4000 – about €3000.

Localvores

In keeping with cutting edge sustainable living practices we are becoming ‘localvores’ – that is, people who eat food produced within a short radius of where they live.

This is our Localvore Store, located in the nearby town of Maldon.

World Environment Day

We did our bit for World Environment Day on June 5th, helping out at the Maryborough Sustainability Group stall at the nearby Carrisbrook Market.

Pictured below are Terry and Richard enjoying a break from the large crowds who mobbed the stall … I don’t think!

Richard astride his homemade grain grinder during a lull in proceedings

Sustainable Fun & Games in Sydney

I’ll be in Sydney in August.

I’m putting it out there to give a presentation and/or workshop on the topic of Sheltermaking and its relevance to sustainable living initiatives.

This article - ‘Inside Zone Zero’ – gives a taste of sort of thinking that will be on offer.

I’m looking for a bit of a challenge, to connect with people who want to move beyond Transition Land to someplace more real and exciting.

I’ll be free for sustainable fun and games in Sydney on the weekend of August 26/27/28th 2011. Waiting to hear from you here!

Gasland

Observe the latest madness in earth violation techniques.

Watch Gasland and be appalled.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in my life but this fracking has to be the worst madness ever.

P11p8 July 2011 Sheltermaker

Coming to a shale deposit near you – soon!

Far North Queensland

Just back from a stimulating trip to FNQ, taking a break, convening workshops and picking up the vibe.

In sustainable circles, as elsewhere, Transition Land Rules.

There’s also interesting stuff happening, such as The Digger Street Post Consumerist Arts Coommunity.

We hunkered down after a communal meal and I did my thing exploring the inside of architecture.

This had peculiar relevance to the Digger Street Community who have torn down the boundaries separating 3 adjoining properties and made food gardens. They have also torn out partitions in the houses to make more creative use of space and are poised for stuff to happen.

I enjoyed myself and even had my boundaries pushed a little! Someone asked my why, if I was so against stereotypes, was I promoting a stereotype i.e. The EconoSpace.

Excellent question. But really, a cheeky one, I thought. I haven’t had to break into a sweat for a while. But I liked the stimulus, the challenge. Honest and direct.

If we don’t get pushed a bit we get stale. Too much hugging and not enough pushing. If we’re giving birth to a new eco-era then pushing is where its at.

And my answer? The EconoSpace is a staging post on my way to somewhere* else.

On my way to somewhere else … architecturally speaking

*This somewhere else looks like being Dunolly where I can indulge in some post-sterotypical post-consumerist sheltermaking in peace.

Spirit Houses

Post-stereotypical, post-consumerist notions inevitably were part of the Spirit House Workshop which wrapped up the Architecture & The Meaning of Life Programme.

The workshop fulfilled its promise from the beginning.

On an early evening stroll we discovered that the summer floods had marooned a wealth of timber in the trees by the creek.

We salvaged a load of this. Perfect spirit house material reflecting the eternal cycle of life.

Spirit House Dedication

Part of our Here & Now

The Architecture & The Meaning of Life Programme was a great buzz and has pushed me forwards in ways that I can only be thankful for.

I am keen to get stuck in even deeper than before such is the promise of what I am feeling. Watch this space!

DreamSpace

I as fortunate on my visit to FNQ to visit the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival.

This made me feel alive in ways I will remember forever.

White fella culture has nothing to compare.

Chillin’ at the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival

Open House – traditional aboriginal shelter

Sustainable materials … branches, leaves, fiber, bark, love, time

The end can easily be closed in …

Bark acts as an external waterproofing layer

The inside

Mona Mona

This is another aboriginal design which I am lucky enough to have become involved with.

A Meeting Place for All People.

This is my feeble effort to isolate the geometry of the structure so that it could be set out on-site.

I also got to a chance to witness The Dream which inspired it courtesy of the designer George Reilly.

His vision is to make a meeting place, centered on the fire, to allow people gather and share. The structure will be located at the Mona Mona community near Karunda, north of Cairns.

Modelmaking. George, right, Ramon, centre and Robert, left … ponder The Dream in miniature.

Laying The Dream upon the Earth. Geometry meets The Real World.

The work crew. From left to right - Jay, George, Alanna, Lisa, Peter, Ramon and Robert.

Further details of this on-going project will be detailed in forthcoming Sheltermakers

A 100 % Ecological Demise

WHEN SWEDISH eco-minded entrepreneur Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak departs this life, she will be turned into compost to help grow a shrub she has already selected .

“It is the Rhododendron Cunningham White, a delicate pink shade when it opens, later turning white. I can think of no better way to continue the circle of life than to return to the soil and nurture it,” she says.

Mayday Sheltermaker

Posted May 4th, 2011 by Peter Cowman and filed in Sheltermaker

Tags: econospace, EconoSpaceMaking, Living Architecture, living architecture centre, low cost self build shelter, Sheltermaker

1 Comment

The EconoSpace in Permaculture mag.

The EconoSpace features in the current edition of Permaculture Magazine

Meanwhile, in central Victoria the mini-EconoSpace is being readied for occupation. Natural paint using locally sourced ochre is being applied both inside and out. Pictures in the next Sheltermaker.

This building has cost only AUD$4000, the equivalent of €3000!

Discover EconoSpaceMaking yourself.

Full details HERE

Saturday June 11

Dunolly, Victoria, Australia

Creating space to cater to the intangible aspects of our lives is the theme of this workshop. Whether it is making a meditation space for oneself, creating a miniature temple for a favorite deity or crafting a space where one can simply ‘be’, this workshop will explore the exciting and liberating aspects of creating space that is dedicated to our inner lives.

Fee: $75 – Couples $135

Booking Fee: $25 with balance payable at the Workshop

The peculiar story of the EconoSpace on RTE’s Nationwide programme

The death of natural herbal medicine

!!URGENT European ban on natural herbs!!

Traditional Herbal Medicine Product Directive

A new European directive comes into force on 30 April, 2011 making it illegal to grow, dispense, prescribe or use natural herbs used in TCM, Ayurveda etc. The only thing that will be legal is synthetic chemical pharmaceuticals. We can make a difference. Urgent action is needed. Stop the directive from being implemented. Please sign the petition wherever you are and forward this to everyone you know. This is hugely important and urgent – there will be no turning back once this has gone through.

Big Pharmas will take your natural products and synthetically produce them, and only they will be able to sell them. Independent health shops will close, key therapies will cease. Bringing the herbs in from another country will be illegal !!!!

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Hazards of Energy Efficiency

By Alanna Moore

In 1989 I studied a course on Building Biology that had just been translated from the German. It warned of the hazards of modern building practices and materials in relation to human health, comfort and wellbeing, as well as any deleterious planetary effects. Penned by architects and health and building professionals in Germany, it’s dictum is that our homes should be healthy spaces where we can relax and rejuvenate. Unlike homes with Sick Building Syndrome, our homes should protect us and foster our wellbeing.

Twenty one years later and I lament that Building Biology has not captured people’s attention as much as other important environmental issues. We do spend a great deal of time indoors, after all. Yet what has become paramount in the current ethos is the Green Spin of energy efficient building that is totally divorced from our own biological needs.

These days society has a semi-robotic nature. People don’t seem to ask questions any more. They pretty much just accept the status quo and the spin that goes with it. In terms of Energy Efficiency and the Power Down scenario of Peak Oil, this seems very much the case. But we ignore the tenets of good Building Biology at our own peril! The concept of sustainability should include humans in there too!

Technocratic spin doctors chant mantras of their ‘adhering to the national standards’. Meanwhile, in other countries, such as Russia, standards for exposure to electro-magnetic radiation and other environmental hazards can be way more stringent. We really need to take the more precautionary approach. There can be energy efficiency that doesn’t compromise our health.

So here is my checklist of potential hazards for the home and home planet.

1. Compact Fluoro Lightbulbs. They have a ghastly dull light, they flicker – affecting our brainwaves, and they contain mercury!! For good energy efficiency, the best alternative is to replace all your bulbs with low radiation LED bulbs. (And don’t send those compact fluoros to landfill! Get them properly recycled.)

2. The Air Tight House. Trying to keep any fresh air out and all the heat inside, it makes for a good mausoleum. This might save on the heating bill and greenhouse gases, but if the building can’t breathe and outgass naturally how are we to breathe? Our homes need to act as a ‘third skin’ for us. This is the most well known tenet of good Building Biology. As an alternative – put on a wool jumper and long johns instead!

3. Fibreglass Insulation Batts. Fine particles can end up in the lungs. This could be the asbestos of the future. Plenty of alternatives around.

4. The ‘Smart Meter’. Never was there such a misnomer! Said to be an adjunct to ‘managing’ electricity demand, it doesn’t actually encourage a frugal use of electricity. That requires education and a change in the mainstream ethos that is anti-consumeristic – hardly something on any government’s agenda. What it does do is irradiate us with more electro-smog. To quote the ‘EMR & Health’ (Jan-March ’10, vol 6 no 1, page 3)

“The smart meters relay information about electricity consumption through radiofrequency signals similar to the radiation emitted by mobile phones. This radiation will travel through the power lines, through household wiring on top of the 50 Hz signal that is already in place. Information recorded by the meters is transmitted four times a day through power lines to an access point, usually on a light pole, which acts like a mini base station in a mobile phone network. One access point usually serves homes within a wide radius… Because it falls under the category of ‘low impact facilities’ it is legally immune from council control.”

But ‘low impact’ doesn’t necessarily mean low levels of health effects. The low level of power they use could be pathogenic over a lengthy exposure.

“Low power signals may even be more biologically active because the body is accustomed to low-power signal and so they may slip through its defence system,” says ‘EMR & Health’.

If you want to know more about the prospect of ‘dirty electricity’, which could be soon, or might be already, contaminating your household electrical system from so-called ‘Smart Meters’– read Donna Fisher’s ‘Silent Fields – the growing cancer cluster story’, Lindlahr Books, Qld, 2008.

5. Wind Farms. They are not reliable enough to replace coal powered stations. And that’s just as well. If you find yourself living within a kilometre or two from one of these, and especially if you are downwind from them, you will be a candidate for Wind Farm Syndrome – headaches, insomnia, irritation…. Niggling symptoms that don’t quite qualify as ‘real’ health impacts, so you might also get accused of hypochondria! Certainly any grazing animals living beneath the turbines will suffer most – milk drying up and dying quickly etc.

“Massive wind technology produces a relentless fusillade of pulsating sound, mechanical in pattern, audible to all and intolerable to many, particularly those sensitive to infrasound vibrations.”—Jonathan Boone, Ph.D. Maryland, USA

Not only is the noise and altered atmospherics a health hazard, sometimes the very ground in the vicinity is found to be electrically live! (This is due to stray voltage from the high number of underground linkages between the turbines.)

See the articles at my website, such as the one that starts off: “One dairy farmer lost 600 cows over some years as stray voltage reduced his cows’ immune system. He had so much stray voltage that when he dug copper wire into his soil it lit up an electric light bulb…” Read here. http://www.geomantica.com/geom28.htm#7 and also http://www.geomantica.com/geom45.htm#3

Also see an American site: www.windturbinesyndrome.com

6. Concrete floors for heat banking in solar-passive house design. In this regard – they are an over-kill. Concrete homes are damp for years and have terrible ‘feng shui’. You can feel drained of energy if spending time on a concrete floor. The metal mesh in them can be a conduit for stray electricity and any geopathic stress* too, if that is present, so earthing needs to be very good. Concrete has no breathing ability at all. The production of concrete (and also lime) is very high in terms of energy and resource use. In fact it’s probably the most un-eco-friendly building product around. But there are alternatives!

There are many more examples, but these are some of the worst examples in my home state of Victoria currently (the Smart Meter is being introduced first to this state), as well as in many other regions worldwide.

As a sensible society, we don’t have to take the Techno Trip to Hell. Living in an Over-Developed Country means we need to learn from the ancient wisdom in vernacular, natural buildings and the ecological traditions of our ancestors and less-environmentally -impacting neighbours of today.

* Geopathic stress is a natural problem of the geo-biology of a place and it needs to be checked to ensure you are living in a healthy home. The author is a professional consultant in geobiology and geomancy. Email: info@geomantica.com

Response to Greenwash Article

From Joey Cleary:

I was thinking that Alanna’s article about her experience at Cloughjordan would be an excellent addition to my former village members website at http://www.cloughjordan.net/

anthony bio shot SMALL Mayday Sheltermaker

From Anthony Ashworth:

I wanted to congratulate you on the Green Wash article, well done!

Most importantly, I applaud your statement about making what we have more sustainable, rather than merely building new developments and worse still building on green field sites! I live in an established country community one half hours from Sydney and where we are under real pressure from the State Gov’t to expand housing into the environment and into green fields, and due to obsessive and misguided philosophies that “the economy, thus the population must continue to grow”.

I became intimately aware of Green Wash myself, after having consulted on so called “Green” developments in conjunction with so called Australian top sustainable Architects.

It was all developer driven, to wash council and community objections away from Green Field developments. On one occasion I designed the master site plan only to be told I needed to modify it substantially to radically increase the number of homes planned for the site “it’s got far too much open green space, we can make it sustainable with technology” I felt that I had already really pushed the site coverage, it was now certainly NOT sustainable for the environment, the local eco system, nor the expected residents, perhaps it never was, and I had been green screened and perhaps culpable myself, in helping to design just another awful battery chicken farm for humans over 55, badged as sustainable green living.

The saddest thing for me was, apart from my own misgivings about my involvement, was witnessing the highly reputed Eco/Green Architect being just fine with the process, he did not stand up to the developer at all, nor even point out the hypocrisy, thus making him as well as the developer a Hypocrite.

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Wikipedia

I am much more aware of what projects I agree to be involved and complicate in, lest I should have my soul dirtied by the wash.

The editor of The Scavanger magazine was also quick to pick up the story!

Living Architecture – Chinese style

Article from Malaysian magazine featuring an article on Living Architecture …. in Chinese.

Next Sheltermaker – June 21

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