22/02/2024
Climate cooling through natural building
Low Carbon, Natural Building Workshop. Easter, 2024. Kapiti.
How can we build better today?
In the context of climate change and rising housing costs, how can we build or renovate affordable houses that are energy efficient, healthy for the planet, people and other life affected by the life cycle of the built environment?
Over a 3-day weekend explore how we build and what we build with to create beautiful, healthy homes using low carbon, natural and abundant materials and how to work with them in a hands-on way. Learn design basics, building science and material assessment. Network and meet other people interested in natural building.
Topics will include:
Basic building science
Building legislation
Passive solar design
New builds & renovations
Material assessment & testing
Wood
Earth Building
Straw bale, light earth & hempcrete building & Bio char
Natural Plasters
When: Easter weekend (29 - 31 March 2024)
Where: Trinity Farm 202 Waitohu Valley Road, Otaki, Kapiti Coast
Catering: tea, coffee, snacks and lunch provided
Cost:
$490.00 full price
$390.00 concession
Thanks to support from Kapiti council, Kapiti resident cost is:
$390.00 full price
$290.00 concession
A limited number of volunteer places are also available
Optional Accommodation:
For those who are from further afield or want to stay, there are on site camping & self catering options available.
To Register or for more information please email:
[email protected]
021 121 1321
The workshops will be delivered through PowerPoint presentations and talks, practical exercises and hands-on learning, led by Tom Beauchamp & Blue Forsyth.
Tom Beauchamp:
Tom’s mahi is a builder, design collaborator, consultant and teacher in earth and natural building. Tom runs a small company “Natural Build Otaki” based on the Kapiti coast.
After a career in both visual and performing arts in NZ and overseas, he became inspired by sustainable architecture and natural building after attending an EBANZ conference in 2014. Driven by a desire to help create a better world for the next generation, alongside learning earth and natural fibre building methods Tom completed a conventional building apprenticeship and is a licenced building practitioner.
With his background in the arts, Tom works in a collaborative way with clients, architects, engineers and other building practitioners to create homes that work on multiple regenerative levels including, relationship with surrounding ecology, embodied energy, performance, beauty, health and life cycle analysis. Tom lives with his artist wife and 2 kids in Otaki Beach.
Blue Forsyth:
Blue is a passionate advocate for affordable, healthy and sustainable housing,
especially the use of natural materials. His special interest is in developing
methods of earth and straw bale construction suited to our challenging
economic and climatic conditions whilst improving environmental outcomes.
He has been active in earth building for over 30 years. During this period, he
has worked extensively with the Heritage New Zealand to help preserve our
earth building heritage as well as working on many modern earth and straw
bale buildings.
Blue has been promoting the earth and straw bale building options through
both formal and informal courses and workshops. He developed and tutored a
Certificate course in Natural Building through the Aoraki Polytechnic (now Ara
Institute of Canterbury) in Timaru. Blue also holds a Bachelor of Resource
Studies from Lincoln University.
In 2018, Blue and family relocated to Foxton Beach from where he continues
to offer a range of services to those wishing to pursue natural building options,
from friendly support, education and consultation to materials testing and
construction. He is also continuing to experiment with new products and
building methods especially around improving carbon balance.
Some quotes from previous participants:
“Awesome workshop! A lot of patience and predisposition of you two guys to clear all
doubts and explain things as many times as necessary, and extremely generous about the
quality and quantity of information imparted. The amount of knowledge and experience on
the subject both of you have is outstanding and was very well received.”
“It seems to me that the building techniques you guys have taught us could well be the answer to
some of the world's major problems, climate change, the housing crises, unhealthy homes etc.
Imagine building a healthy, breathable, cosy warm house with your own hands!”
“Really enjoyed both weekends! Have a much better understanding now of what earth building
involves and the many different styles.”
