Washington This Summer

June 29, 2015 at 8:02 pm

Yogan is an accomplished timber framer (and treehouse builder) from France. His work has appeared in our last two books. He will be traveling along the west coast this summer and wants to hook up with builders, home owners, homesteaders, and/or people of like interests. He’s open to any kind of arrangement, including working for room and/or board.

You can check out his work here: yogan.over-blog.com

From Yogan:

Hi friend builders, carpenters, inventors…

I’m Yogan, a carpenter of south west france,

I’m coming in August, September and October to walk on the west coast, from California to Seattle. My goal is to meet, visit, help, places and peoples where there are amazing shelters, cabins—in the woods if possible.

If I could find a community of carpenters living in cabins in the forest, it would be perfect!

I’d also like to go to any carpenter or timber framers’ meetings.

I will be hitchhiking frequently with my backpack and accordion! You can email me at: Yogan Carpenter <yogancarpenter@gmail.com>

Our Next Book – SMALL HOMES – Now In Production

June 25, 2015 at 8:37 pm

I started 3 days ago. My M.O. is to open the file drawer and start picking out folders (there are 50-60 now) to work on.

I pick them out randomly and start doing layout— with scissors and removable scotch tape. No stinkin computers at this stage.

I print out the text in 3 & 4 columns, adjust photos to desired size on copy machine, and do rough layouts.

This is turning out to be really fun. We’ve accumulated material for maybe a year and now, the book is starting to assemble itself, in random manner. Organizing will come later.

Note: contact us if you know of small homes (400-1200 sq. ft.) that would work in this book:

smallhomes@shelterpub.com

We are especially interested in any kind of homes in cities and towns.

Building a Primitive Wattle and Daub Hut From Scratch

June 22, 2015 at 3:51 pm

“I built this hut in the bush using naturally occurring materials and primitive tools. The hut is 2m wide and 2m long, the side walls are 1m high and the ridge line (highest point) is 2m high giving a roof angle of 45 degrees. A bed was built inside and it takes up a little less than half the hut. The tools used were a stone hand axe to chop wood, fire sticks to make fire, a digging stick for digging and clay pots to carry water. The materials used in the hut were wood for the frame, vine and lawyer cane for lashings and mud for daubing. Broad leaves were initially used as thatch which worked well for about four months before starting to rot. The roof was then covered with sheets of paper bark which proved to be a better roofing material. An external fireplace and chimney were also built to reduce smoke inside. The hut is a small yet comfortable shelter and provides room to store tools and materials out of the weather.…”

Sent by Jon Kalish

Four-Year Old Readers of Our Books

June 22, 2015 at 10:30 am

It’s surprising how many little kids love our mini books. This is Oliver. He and his family came to my book signing at the Mother Earth News Fair in Oregon last week. He went through it page by page.

Foster’s Treehouse (#5)

June 16, 2015 at 10:30 am

You get to the first treehouse (where Foster lives) up a steep ladder, then from here, up a glue-lam-beam curved staircase to a middle hexagonal platform (where in the photo of Foster, we were sitting and watching the sun set over the tree tops). From there it’s a bouncy (scary) cable walkway to the upper hexagonal treehouse (2nd photo), where I slept in the loft. Carpentry everywhere is meticulous—tight joints. even of compound miters. This ain’t scruffy hippy carpentry.

Post a comment (1 comment)

Foster Huntington’s Treehouse (#4)

June 15, 2015 at 7:41 pm

I’m just starting to work my next book, Small Homes, and still swamped catching up with all the notes I made to my recent trips to NYC and Oregon. My problem right now is too much “content.”

An example is Foster Huntington’s quite incredible compound built on a knoll in the Columbia River Gorge, about 45 minutes northeast of Portland. I wish I had time to do a feature article on this treehouse/skate park/hot tub complex that has a 360° view, which includes the (white) tip of Mount Hood and the Multnomah Falls (500+ feet tall)—I’ll get around to it eventually.

In coming days I’ll put up photos from my visit with Foster. If you’re interested, here are a couple of links to Foster’s latest projects, a film on Vimeo chronicling the months of treehouse construction, as well as his KickStarter campaign for a book on the same subject, which has already generated (ulp!) $58,000 (his goal was $30,0000).

https://vimeo.com/129335481

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fosterhuntington/the-cinder-cone-build-book

Post a comment (1 comment)

Tiny 3-Story Brick Home in Greenwich Village

May 25, 2015 at 3:06 pm

My Talk/Slideshow: “50 Years of Natural Building” This Weekend at Maker Faire

May 14, 2015 at 6:41 pm

I actually started building in 1960 (above is my first building in 1961, in Mill Valley, California, a studio with what is now called a “living roof”) and soon thereafter started shooting photos and interviewing builders for our series of books on handmade housing. In those days we didn’t call it “natural building,” but that’s what it was. In our book Shelter in 1973, a section of the book was devoted to these materials: wood, adobe, stone, straw bale, thatch, and bamboo. I guess we were natural before it was called “natural.”

A month or so ago, Cheryl Long, the editor at The Mother Earth News, asked me if I could do a talk on natural building at the TMEN fair in Albany, Oregon (near Corvallis) on the first weekend in June. As I was getting the materials together, the MakerFaire asked if I could do a presentation at their annual event in San Mateo California, which is coming up this weekend.

I have selected photos from our five major building books, and will be doing a presentation at noon this Saturday (May 16, 2015) on the Maker Square stage in the Homegrown Village section of the fair.

Here are links to the fair and to my presentation:

https://makerfaire.com/maker/entry/51460/

https://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2015/schedule/