Natural Building Colloquium - East was: RE: [Cob] Work parties ?? N. or S. East

[mudhome at netzero.net]

At 11:24 AM 3/1/2004 -0600, Amanda Peck wrote:
[snip]
 > Seems like there was something from one of the New England groups not 
long ago as well.  But I don't keep track of
 > them as much as I do the community 45 minutes drive away.

Perhaps you are thinking of the 2004 Natural Building Colloquium-East (June 
26-July 3) in Central New York State. Shannon did post a link to the 
facilitator's  Gaiatecture Design website. There is now a direct link to 
colloquium info:
http://www.gaiatecture.com/workshops/nbce04.html

They have at least 35 confirmed presenters so far, including:

Ianto and Linda - I assume everyone on this list knows who they are!

Clark Sanders - a very nice person who doesn't touch the internet, even 
with a ten-foot pole. He has been building (and teaching) particularly 
beautiful natural buildings since he started building his own stone house 
when he was 19. You can see a lovely cob staircase he built in a strawbale 
spec house on the bottom of the second-to-last page of the color section in 
the middle of The Hand-Sculpted House, or in the middle of the official 
event poster (as a pdf) at: 
http://www.gaiatecture.com/workshops/nbce04/finaldraftnbc_2004_poster.pdf

Ben Graham <http://www.spiralworks.org/> - who I'll be excited to meet, 
since we now both live in Vermont, more or less (I'm quite a ways south of 
where he is and so far east that I'm technically in New Hampshire) and I 
really like the looks of the cob shrine he built in a Japanese garden in 
Colorado (using a Bobcat to mix the cob on a driveway, BTW) according his 
article on page 10 of issue twelve (spring 2001) of the CobWeb.

Many more people who've worked with cob, such as: Mark Hoberecht 
<http://harvestbuild.com/> whose "day job" is engineering fuel cells for 
NASA; Pete Fust, who's "extreme tractor cob" I referred to recently; etc., etc.

Rob and Jacki Roy <http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com/> - who are to cordwood 
what Linda and Ianto are to cob. If no one has found out how their 
cob-mortared cordwood projects are holding up by then, maybe I or someone 
else from the list will remember to find out and report back. (The 
difficulty with these events is that there are always so many fascinating 
things happening simultaneously.)

Doni and Kaki

Steve Kemble and Carol Escott - who have worked with earthbags too. Though 
I would classify them primarily as "strawbale people" their house in the 
Bahamas is earthbag.

Several people who are involved with testing and codes, including David 
Eisenberg and Tony Novelli of DCAT <http://dcat.net/>

I could go on and on, but... for the official information on these and all 
the other presenters, see:
http://www.gaiatecture.com/workshops/nbce04/nbce_presenters.html

Some pictures from the 1998 NBC-East can be seen at:
http://potkettleblack.com/natbild/nbce.html

Hope to see you there!
Sarah