These groundbreaking 2-day Workshops will lead participants through the design and construction techniques required for the creation of affordable, healthy and life enhancing natural buildings suited to their personal needs.
This modern evolution of the 10,000 year old vernacular tradition will focus on the creation of natural buildings suited to garden or forest settings that can be constructed without planning permission.
The workshop will be ‘hands on’ offering the opportunity to directly experience the living architecture process including participation in the making and construction of a timber frame for a 13sqm (4.8×3.6m footprint) ecoShelter.
No previous experience is required to fully participate and benefit.
Issues are arising during the preparations for this event, related to insurance cover. The consequences of this may impact the nature of the workshop, meaning, it may have to become a classroom based event. I will update the situation immediately as further information becomes avail to me. A similar event to the one described below is planned for a venue near Fermoy, Co. Cork for August 17&18th. The insurance situation there has been reviewed and the green light to proceed is shining! This will be an event for Women only. (Details below) Sorry guys!
The Art of Sheltermaking – Women’s Edition
Yoga of Sound Natural Retreat , Ballyhooly, Co. Cork
August 17&18th 2024
From his many years of teaching and assisting his students Peter has developed a theory that it was women who were the early sheltermakers. ‘My women students were consistently more daring, more imaginative, more practical, more enthusiastic, more co-operatively minded than the men … all that seemed to be missing were a few basic woodworking skills that their dad’s had never thought to impart to them … that, along with building being considered solely a man’s business, of course.‘
In a special Women’s Edition of The Art of Sheltermaking Peter is inviting exclusively female participants to explore his theory of women being the early sheltermakers. He believes it was this historic development that lit the way along the evolutionary path to the present. Such innovation and daring is again required, he believes, as we strive to live consciously and sustainably and create affordable, healthy, low-impact buildings in which to shape the future.
Further details to follow shortly…
Sheltermaking
Architecture is composed of the 4 dimensions of the known world
Workshop Programme:
• Natural materials and their use
• Living Architecture principles
• Basic carpentry techniques
• The construction of framing components and their formation into a building structure
• The construction of window and door frame units and their installation into a frame
• Wall, floor and roof composition options
• Site analysis and site preparation techniques
• Methodology for the development of individual design solutions
• Proper construction sequencing and site organisation principles
• Open discussions in respect of ‘invisible’ architecture and the Course experience
• Supported with a Handout and access to extensive additional online material.
Some uses for an ecoShelter … Art Studio; Playhouse; Storage Room; Meditation Space; Home Office; Bath House; Garden Building; Computer Room; Site Office; Writers Retreat; Love Shack; DoNothing Space …
Sheltermaking:
The creation of permanent shelter is a defining characteristic of the evolutionary path we follow. We carry within us innate knowledge of this sheltermaking process, expressing this freely as children.
Vernacular architecture traditions are incubators of human culture, which now, it is believed, is the driver of evolution. This path, interpreted as a sustainable green future, requires buildings that can provide appropriate context for this new way of life to be understood lived out.
Hands-on sheltemaking
When creating a building it is purpose and intention that breathe life into it. When this is understood, for example by consciously and sensitively creating an eco-shelter suited to an aspect of your life, innate sheltermaking instincts are awakened and inform the path forward.
This creative journey, characterised as it is by the harmonisation of head and heart, reveals the immense potentiality inherent in the sheltermaking process, providing, as it does, a fresh perspective on the very nature of being.
The 2-day programme will be based on Living Architecture principles, will utilise the Peter-Post framing system in conjunction with natural materials.
Some uses for an ecoShelter … Art Studio; Playhouse; Storage Room; Meditation Space; Home Office; Bath House; Garden Building; Computer Room; Site Office; Writers Retreat; Love Shack; DoNothing Space …
Sheltermaking:
The creation of permanent shelter is a defining characteristic of the evolutionary path we follow. We carry within us innate knowledge of this sheltermaking process, expressing this freely as children. 
