News from Southern Africa (fwd)

[Shannon C. Dealy]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 13:07:41 -0500
From: Jim Cornish <jcornish at crosslink.net>
To: owner-coblist at deatech.com
Cc: jcornish at crosslink.net
Subject: Re: News from Southern Africa

At 11:57 AM 3/3/97 GMT+0200, you wrote:
>Hullo Everyone. Greetings from Cape Town!
>There's a bunch of us here in the southern tip of Africa just got 
>taught how to cob by Jan Stuurman who came out and ran some courses. 
>We've formed a natural builder's colloqium and have started a 
>newsletter. We'll be swopping skills and labour and such too. 
>I'm raving about cob and have read through all your mail to date, but 
>hadn't much to contribute until now.
>The Suskin's have got their plans for a strawbale house past code and 
>are getting geared to start. I'm selling my heavily bonded suburban 
>house so's I can  start again with a cob house. It's in the hands 
>of the gods and goddesses right now as to when this one sells and I 
>can get going on the new one. But meanwhile I'm exploring all the 
>peripheral stuff like where to get my clay and my scavenged car 
>windows etc. Keith Struthers has been quietly building cob for about 
>three years now and has the code all sorted out already!
> I live pretty close to a squatter camp and all these 
>beautiful natural people from the rural areas are coming in and living 
>in plastic baghouses and losing their connection with the earth and 
>wanting mercedes Benzes and swimming pools. I'm looking forward to 
>what can grow out of  building a "mudhouse" in the middle of suburbia!
>Also, I'm doing the foundaton year at the Steiner college part-time
>and in our first module which was on the threefold aspect of 
>man, of course I chose Architecture as the theme for my project. Completely 
>blew my mind, and I figured it might be interesting to some of you. 
>Including the final paragraph here but could zap out the entire thing 
>to any who are interested.
>NATURAL BUILDING
>>From Bayes, page 25: "...he (Steiner) tells us that when we use the the earth,
>the seas, the forests and so on for raw materials,we not only upset an 
>ecological balance but also cast out elemental beings or nature spirits who 
>live there. But then when we use these materials in technology we produce 
>something which becomes the abode, not of the displaced nature spirits,
>but of Ahrimanic beings.
>Every new building deprives a plot of earth of the healing forces of sun,
>wind, rain, plant and animal life. The building must redeem this by its own 
>qualities. Steiner adds another aspect to this by saying that when man 
>gazes at nature the perceptive quality of his life of soul deteriorates, 
>but that the introduction of true architecture into the landscape can 
>rescue the soul from this situation, can provide a remedial and 
>therapeutic focus."
>When one builds with your own hands, you are actually pouring your 
>life forces into the building and building an etheric building at the 
>same time. You are `enlivening' the materials - like potentising medicine. 
>At night when we sleep, the astral body gets drained by the Ahrimanic 
>energies in the building materials produced by technology, but in this way 
>these forces are counteracted.
>Finally, in the last chapter, Steiner says " .... it is not at all unnatural 
>that in a building which belongs to the present and future, we should set 
>out in full consciousness to create forms which will help man to conquer 
>the consciousness of merely physical and material actuality and feel 
>himself expanded out into the cosmos through the architecture, sculpture 
>and all that this work of art may contain." 
>That's it! Will talk to you again. Good luck with all your buildings.
>Regards, Rencia.
>
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Hello Cape Town, hello Rencia!

I read your mail with much interest, two things in particular.

1) Regarding the "beautiful and natural people"....  While I agree they are beautiful people, as we all are, I suspect that they are losing touch with reality as well as the earth, living in plastic baghouses and wanting Mercedes Benzes and swimming pools.  Perhaps they're not as "natural" as they used to be?  But then who am I to judge?!

2) The section from Bayes that you quoted was more than interesting, it was downright provocative.  I would be grateful if you could "zap out the entire thing" to me.  You might want to mail it directly to me at my personal address <jcornish at crosslink.net> to avoid cluttering a whole lot of mailboxes.

Oh, by the way - while having to deal with a temporary financial setback, we are looking to build within the year.  Haven't finalized the design yet, but will probably try to combine either a cob or strawbale structure on three sides with the south side providing both active and passive solar heat.  Have you heard of anybody doing this?  Has anybody else?  If so, we could sure use some inputs.

Thank you Rencia and thank all of you for some wonderful information and sources.  A special thanks to deatech for making all this possible.

Goodby for now,

Jim Cornish, from Virginia, USA  ;-)