by Peter McIntosh | Feb 23, 2017 | Alternative building, Early Childhood Development centre, Guest post, Projects
In Delft, an impoverished township on the outskirts of the Cape Flats, local government is changing its approach to building early childhood development centres (ECDs) with a pioneering project showcasing a hybrid of natural building methods and up-cycled waste...
by Peter McIntosh | Nov 23, 2015 | Adobe, Architecture award, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Design competition, Events, Light Earth, Mud brick, Natural building, Strawbale, Sustainable building, Sustainable human settlements
The TERRA award is a collaborative effort on an international scale to enable both professionals and the general public to fully appreciate earth’s increasing popularity as a building material of high aesthetic and technical quality. Earth is becoming...
by Peter McIntosh | Nov 9, 2014 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Earth testing, Earth theory, Natural building, Natural building methods, Natural mortar mixes, Natural plasters, Peter McIntosh, Sustainable building
(Please note that in order to understand what is written here you will need to have read my previous posts on understanding earth and testing earth) Plasters and mortars are by far the process that I get asked about the most, and for good reason as plasters are what...
by Peter McIntosh | Jun 3, 2014 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Earth testing, Earth theory, Mud brick, Natural building, Natural building methods, Peter McIntosh, Rammed Earth, Sand, Sandbag, Strawbale, Sustainable building
By Peter McIntosh (Please note that in order to understand what is written here you will need to have read my previous post on understanding earth) Earth requires two properties to make it strong enough for building, compressive and tensile strength. In much the...
by Peter McIntosh | Apr 20, 2014 | Adobe, Clay, Cob, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB), Earth theory, Mud brick, Natural building methods, Peter McIntosh, Rammed Earth, Sand
By Peter McIntosh One of the challenges of working with earth is that no two sites are the same. The recipes one learns on one site may not work on another, because the earths’ found there are composed differently. Most earth building relies on a mix of sand and clay,...
