The 3-day Natural Building Workshop in Tao’s Center was a great success and the result is here for you to see. I don’t know if the photographs show how much fun we had building this wall made of stone, mud, sand, straw and a bit of goat hair, but we certainly enjoyed it. And although it looks like a wall, it is actually a bridge.
We bridged old with new building techniques, we bridged local artisans of stone building with Greek specialists in natural building with Italian artists of raw earth, we brought together people from Canada, Italy, Germany, Israel and Greece. We bridged people with different specialties, architects and engineers, artists, computer geeks and even philosophers, all interested in and aiming for a different living standard, close to nature, protecting and sustaining it.
For many of us it came as a real surprise that humble earth can actually replace concrete and give such a solid result. It is one thing to read about building with natural materials and look at photographs of chubby little houses in far-away places and another to build with your own hands. Amidst a severe financial crisis, which deprives people of the hope to acquire their own “roof over their heads”, the potential to build yourself your own natural, cheap, robust, healthy-to-live-in, home, with low environmental impact and organic, gorgeous, one-of-a-kind shape, is inspiring and empowering.
A warm thank you to the cob.gr team and all the workshop participants who left us with this wonderful reminder of their love, knowledge and work.
