building with straw bales is the latest thing around here... this is way more interesting looking... but why? Are you trying to mimic naturally occuring and strong structures? Is it set design? please tell.

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cat turned on the scanner again?!

The goal is to provide shelter and a mobile rain-water well, on the cheap. The design impliments reused 2-liter soda bottles as structural arches, which are sound enough to keep it up (as far as it's been tested). Like hay and cow-dung are local materials for agregarian lifestyles... empty soda bottles and plastic tarps are the byproducts of urban lifestyles. So I was definitely inspired by my surrounding in Brooklyn, so different from the sparse fjords and wintry peaks of my native soil.

very interesting. Now you don't have to answer the question on my last post. Should have read this first.

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cat turned on the scanner again?!

This is fascinating. Its really interesting to see waste products of an urban lifestyle being put to use. I live out in the country and use straw bales to build - you live in the city and use soda bottles.
This is a terrific concept. I see you've tested it structurally, have you had any interest or possibilities to design anything large scale?

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Designing and Building houses made from Straw and Mud.

Check us out at....... ~agincourtgreen

Hey, thanks for the interest, Really glad to hear about some houses that aproach the ecologicaly locally globally sound work necessary for sustainability. I look forward to seeing what your working on.

If your interested in mud, maybe this site will be usefull to you. It's about cow dung. It's supposed to provide a very soothing envirnment after what's harmfull is leached out.

[link]

... also, I have designed some mor large scale stuff, but found that it begins to lose my understanding, once it's bigger than I've been able to build... by hand. I'm thinking that the small modelling and large scale work should resemble each other structurally, in how they work, and maybe not directly in how they look. I', definely interested in bigger work, but whatever gets it across for concept or habitation simply, is fine by me. Also, the watercollectingshelter can be easily taken down and set up, and is light but bulky, for 1 or 2 people to carry, making mobility a +.

Yeah, being able to build something yourself really really helps to understand it. I'm trying to persuade clients to at least get involved in some aspect of the construction. I really like your models, some great organic shapes. Are you studying or working?
Thanks a lot for the link, some really interesting ideas. I'd never seen anything using cow dung before.

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Designing and Building houses made from Straw and Mud.

Check us out at....... ~agincourtgreen

Yeah, building it definitely gives one an understanding of what one is affecting through architecture. I recently became interested in cow dung when a neighbor of mine, I believe is from Guyana(?), discussed some of these benefits of building with the material. As I understand it, they build from all local materials and everyone who lives in the indigenous housing is an architect, as their housing is a tradition/culture of the way they live and work with the environment.

It's got to be tough to get clients to participate in building their own envirnment. Many people these days seem to think working a job on a computer to pay money for every essential that we use is participation enough in their own environment, as if it doesn't matter what the shoebox you live in is like... only that it's laboratory-like clean and close to people in your own economic strata...

I'm intrested in the shapes of structures as the shape dilineates what we call architecture and what we call environment, and it can seperate or intertwine the two. The knot structures are all about blurring that line through a kind of modern approach where what is designed corresponds to the surfaces and shapes in nature, driven by a visual mathematics of topology. The everchanging suface both contrasts and parrallels, within itself, the flow of the landscape. And the envelope of the structure becomes a thing that is not fixed, but changes with how one views and occupies it.

I'm intrested in the shapes of structures as the shape dilineates what we call architecture and what we call environment, and it can seperate or intertwine the two. The knot structures are all about blurring that line through a kind of modern approach where what is designed corresponds to the surfaces and shapes in nature, driven by a visual mathematics of topology. The everchanging suface both contrasts and parrallels, within itself, the flow of the landscape. And the envelope of the structure becomes a thing that is not fixed, but changes with how one views and occupies it.