Strawbale Congressional Briefing The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Washington, USA ran a briefing on "Straw-Bale Construction: Harvesting Its Potential As an Affordable and Energy-Efficient Building Strategy" with presentations from Laura Bartels, Sandy Wiggins, Bob Gough and David Eisenberg. Listen to the briefing on the EESI website
Builders Without Borders in DC Are building an exhibit in an effort to foster better understanding of sutainable building techniques. Visit the Botanical Garden in Washington DC up to the 13th October 2008. Read more here.
Women build beautiful homes Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to build beautiful straw bale homes
Village Building, Oregon, USA A 10-day event from May 23rd – June 1 2008 in Portland, Oregon in which neighborhoods activate to build shared public places that they have envisioned, designed, funded, and will maintain for themselves. It includes hands-on education in permaculture design and construction, ecological building, and public art. More about The Village Building Convergence.
The World prefers straw bale Results are in from September's ecoVote and the World clearly prefers straw bale construction but in the Americas cob and strawbale are equally preferred. Read more about the ecoVote results
Women build beautiful homes Barbara and Bee help all sorts of people learn how to build beautiful straw bale homes
Special homes around the World Here are some of the special homes you can find on the natural homes map.
Put your house on Natural Homes Here is a short letter from Tim & Patricia from their straw bale eco house in Argentina.
"The folks who have come to visit all learned about the house from Natural Homes. Keep up the good work! We are pleased that we have a positive influence here. It's all great fun!"
To help others who are thinking of going green we have launched our mapping system so that natural homes around the world are more accessible. If you know about a home that you think should be on our map then contact us. Take a look at the Natural Homes Map.
How to use this site We hope you will find plenty of things here to help you on your way to building a natural, eco-friendly home. The site is divided in to five parts.
Strawbale Workshop in Russia August 18 to September 3, 2008 Bobrovka, Altai Krai, Russia. A unique educational event for natural building enthusiasts, designers, architects, builders, and anyone with an adventurous spirit, faith in sustainable human habitation. More about the Altai Project
A sad but hopeful story Steve James would like to live quietly and work on his building projects in peace. He has shared his skills with many people but now he has probably lost his home because of it. Read more about Steve James and see his house here on the natural homes map
Natural Building Colloquium Sunday, July 27 through Saturday, August 2, 2008. It's the fifth year that the PeaceWeavers have hosted this family-friendly event at the Thunder Mountain Retreat Center near Bath, New York, offering very full days of teaching, learning, building, and networking. Read more here.
International Natural Build Colloquium October 19-26, 2008 Santa Barbara, California, USA. More details will be posted on Natural Building Network soon.
Tha Lammas Story Lammas is applying for planning permission to build an ecovillage in Wales which combines the traditional smallholding model with the latest innovations in environmental design, green technology and permaculture. More about Lammas
Celebrating Sustainability, NC, USA June 20-29 2008, Asheville, with Kleiwerks, run a city wide collaboration of local communities building sustainable solutions for the city. You can volunteer for 2 weeks and up to a year on the project. More details on Kleiwerks and ashevillage.org
Warning in the Americas Results are in from October's ecoVote and the World clearly prefers to invest in straw bale homes but not in the Americas where earthen structures are prefered. Read more here.
Put a map on your blog The natural homes map is now available for you to include in your blog. This is an example blog that displays straw bale houses. Get the code for your blog here and spice up your eco-friendly blog.
What's an Earthship? You can see pictures of earthships with links to the builder's websites here and get a good introduction about earthships on Wikipedia
Off-Grid in New Mexico We are looking for off-grid homes to put on the natural homes map. Recently Chris Niner contacted us to put Green Mountain Solar on the map. His website if full of good advice and well worth a visit.
Reasons to go solar in the USA? Listen to John Schaeffer of Real Goods discuss three reasons to go solar and some of the very tangible benefits in this quick two-minute video
Would you like to contribute If you know of any sites we should link to, or books we should list or maybe you know of a natural home we should include, then please write to us at house@naturalhomes.org.
Strawbale Congressional Briefing 
, Sandy Wiggins, Bob Gough and 
Village Building, Oregon, USA
International Natural Build Colloquium
Put a map on your blog
What's an Earthship?
What's a cordwood house?
