Intro

There are many approaches to natural building depending on design choices in terms of architecture, systems and materials. Some natural buildings are mainly defined by choice of material.  Cob building, for example, can be used to build beautiful homes using earth from the site, but often with limited integration of appropriate systems.  Other approaches can be more holistic.

In the mid 1990‘s I came across a ‘natural building’ approach that seemed to excell across the architecture / system / material spectrum, and I decided I wanted to build. By 2000, I was running CLEVEL with Alex Leeor and Ben Messer,  doing some of the first carbon management work in the UK, and we wanted to initiate an ultra low carbon build project. 

I invited the american ‘biotect’ Michael Reynolds to the UK to talk about earthships – a totally sustainable solution for housing that also offered the advantage of being simple and affordable. 

Michael came to Brighton and presented his work and his vision.  The interest generated was enough for us to decide to work together to build a prototype earthship in Brighton.  Paula Cowie was working on plans for one in Scotland, and these would be the first adaptations of this building form to Europe.  As a fledgling company, CLEVEL needed to open up the project to empower the people who saw its significance, and so the low carbon trust was formed, to look at what the earthship could show people about buildings, lifestyle and carbon.  This was in 2001.

After a lot of hardwork, fundraising and orchestration, the low carbon trust delivered earthship brighton on the south downs, accessable to London, and very much flying a flag as one of the most complete ‘forms’ of natural building available.  Importantly, the project dealt with planning regulation and structural issues associated with building an earthship in western europe.

To take things further, CLEVEL pulled together funding and lead a professional team through a feasibility study to look at using earthship brighton as a prototype for a housing development.  This was successfully completed and lead onto us securing detailed work and full planning permission for a 16 unit earthship housing development on land overlooking the Marina.  This was 2007.

Although we had most of the hurdles dealt with to progressing with this development, the land sale stalled, and I decided instead that with full planning approval already in place since 2006 on land in Brittany, now was the time to really ‘walk my talk’ and push the design further.  I was also lucky enough to be with a partner who shared the vision and didn’t waiver at the thought of all the hard graft.  We set to it with a team of engineers, technicians, builders and friends and by January 2009 we were able to move into a new home, the Brittany Groundhouse.  

The original phone call to Michael and his associate Kirsten has happened from the same land in Brittany back in 1999.  The final phone calls that closed the difficult deals on funding for the earthship in Brighton had also been from the land.  And now, 10 years on we have lived through a whole year in a very naturally aligned home, based on my work with earthships, that has gone beyond my already very high expectations of comfort and performance.

The Groundhouse team all share a common interest in affordable and natural building.  We are presenting here the range of natural building forms that inspire us to think differently about what home can be and our relationship to the earth.

Natural homes offer us the potential to live more comfortably and in a low carbon way.  The biggest barrier to living in a natural home is often inflated land values that make homes unaffordable.  Policy changes are needed as well as further experimentation with community land trusts, low carbon development zones and planning covenants.