This tiny cob house in the lush green
hills of Romania on the banks of the Nera River was built by
Ileana Mavrodin. You can see more of the home on her website at
www.casa-verde.ro and take a closer look inside in the video
below.
|
|
|
|
Ileana talks about her cob home |
|
|
|
This building is the work of artist, designer and architect Hundertwasser. It's the
McDonald's Kinderhilfe Stiftung, a guest house for the parents
of seriously ill children in the nearby hospital in Essen,
Germany. Hundertwasser said, "When one creates green roofs the
houses themselves become part of the landscape." The roof garden is an
extension of the living space and should be accessible from the
home without having to climb up to the garden. For large buildings
Alexander, in his book
A Pattern Language, recommends placing roof gardens at different levels on
the building. |
|
This is an entirely naturally built cabin used as
a store room. Its green roof uses birch bark and only birch bark
for its waterproof membrane. It's one of the many beautiful
natural buildings by Hakan at
Urnatur
in Sweden. Hakan built all the natural homes in the
woodland where he lives by Lake Vattern. Together with is wife
Ulrika they run courses in cabin building using traditional skills
and natural materials and other workshops in fence building, wild
herbs and woodland skills like harvesting birch sap. |
|
This is a traditional Scottish dry stone home called a Blackhouse
however this one is in Canada. Here are some
blackhouses
in Scotland. The house was built using
126 tons of stone at Eric Landman’s farm near Grand Valley, ON.
Notice steps are built into the wall leading up to the chimney
and the
green roof. |
|
Hidden away in a lush Oregon woodland near Coquille, OR, USA is a
collection of tiny cob homes with names like Dawn and Dusk and the
jewel among them is the the home of Ianto and Linda called
Laughing House. Ianto and Linda run the
Cob Cottage Company
sharing their many years of natural building experience and
philosophy with people from
all over the world. |
|
This is the bath house at Noatun Farm in
Øvre Pasvik, Norway. It is near the border with Russia in the very
north of Norway. This little building, which serves as a bathroom, was
built by Hans Schaanning around 1907. Read more about him
and his
sad love story. The roof is almost entirely self seeded moss
and lichen on a birch bark membrane. |
|
Charlie's roundhouse in Wales has a
reciprocal green roof; a roofing method popularised by
Tony Wrench
who was one of the many that helped Simon Dale to build his
woodland home. Tony's book,
Building a Low Impact Roundhouse, details how to build a reciprocal roof. |
|
This is one of Iceland's 18th century fishing
stations. It's built using thick dry stone walls with a timber
roof under thick insulating layers of turf. This is the maritime
museum just outside Bolungarvik. Find out more about
Iclandic fishing stations. |
|
This is a green roof made of seaweed. It's one of the
traditional homes at Læsø, Denmark. The timber used in the house is from the
ships that ran aground on the coast in the 1860s. The huge
attractive seaweed roof demonstrates to the ability of the
inhabitants to utilise the natural, and waste, materials that were
available to them. Here's more about these
seaweed roofs. |
|