The first time I put my hands into a bucket of cob—that magnificent mixture of clay, sand, and straw that’s been used as a building material for thousands of years—something clicked in my brain. It was during a natural building workshop in Devon six years ago, and I was elbow-deep in what looked like chocolate-colored cake batter, squishing it between my fingers and feeling an almost childlike delight. “This is what building should feel like,” I thought. Not sterile, not distant, not requiring specialized equipment or degrees—just human hands transforming earth into shelter.
I’d signed up for the workshop on something of a whim after a particularly soul-crushing week writing about embodied carbon in conventional construction. The numbers had been haunting me: construction and building operations account for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. The average new house contains thousands of components shipped from around the world, each with its own carbon footprint. The cement industry alone is responsible for about 8% of global CO2 emissions. As someone obsessed with sustainability, I’d become increasingly disturbed by the disconnect between my environmental values and the reality of how we create our built environment.
That weekend in Devon changed everything. Our instructor, Maya, a woman in her sixties with soil permanently embedded under her fingernails and the kind of practical wisdom that can’t be taught in classrooms, showed us how to test soil composition by feel, mix cob to the right consistency (it should hold together when dropped from waist height but flatten slightly on impact), and build a simple wall using nothing but material from right beneath our feet. No Portland cement shipped from factories. No dimensional lumber harvested from distant forests. No toxic chemicals or specialized tools. Just earth, straw, sand, water, and human labor.
“People have forgotten that they can build their own shelters,” Maya told us as we worked together to raise a garden wall. “We’ve been convinced that construction is too complex, too technical, too regulated for ordinary people. But humans built their own homes for thousands of years before the modern construction industry existed, and many still do across the world.”
I left that workshop with mud-caked clothes, aching muscles, and a fundamental shift in how I understood our relationship to shelter. Over the following years, I’ve explored various natural building techniques, volunteered on projects across the UK and Europe, interviewed practitioners, and even built a small cob garden office in my parents’ backyard (with proper planning permission, I might add—natural building doesn’t mean ignoring regulations!). What I’ve discovered is a world of building approaches that are simultaneously ancient and revolutionary, simple and sophisticated, local and globally relevant.
Natural building encompasses a diverse range of techniques that share some key principles: minimal processed or manufactured materials, low embodied energy, locally-sourced components, non-toxic ingredients, and methods accessible to non-specialists. While professional builders certainly excel in these methods, they’re intentionally designed to be learnable by everyday people. They represent a democratization of the building process—taking shelter creation back from an industry of specialists and returning it to the hands of those who will actually inhabit the spaces.
Cob remains my first love in the natural building world. This mixture typically contains about 20% clay, 70-80% sand, and a generous helping of straw to add tensile strength (plus water to achieve the right consistency). The resulting material can be sculpted like clay when wet but dries to a stone-like hardness that has produced buildings that have stood for centuries. Devon, where I attended that first workshop, has thousands of cob buildings that have withstood the notoriously wet British weather for 500+ years. Not exactly temporary structures.
What makes cob particularly special for beginners is its forgiving nature. Unlike conventional building where mistakes can be costly and dangerous, cob allows for continual adjustment. Wall leaning a bit? Push it back into place while it’s still damp. Don’t like the shape of that niche? Reshape it. Made a mistake? Add more cob or carve away the excess. It’s construction as an organic, iterative process rather than a rigid sequence of irreversible steps.
My friend Sophie, who built her own cob cottage in Cornwall, describes working with it as “having a conversation with your home as it emerges.” That building dialogue creates a relationship between builder and dwelling that’s impossible to achieve when purchasing a pre-made structure or hiring contractors to execute standardized plans.
Of course, cob has limitations. It’s labor-intensive (though the labor can be a joyful community activity rather than drudgery). It’s not appropriate for all climates without modifications. And it requires protection from excessive moisture through good foundations and roof overhangs. But in suitable contexts, it creates beautifully organic structures with excellent thermal mass that moderate temperature swings naturally.
Straw bale construction offers another accessible entry point into natural building. Unlike cob, which uses minimal processed materials, straw bales utilize an agricultural byproduct—the dried stalks remaining after grain harvest—as both structure and insulation. Bales are stacked like giant bricks, secured with bamboo or wooden stakes, and then plastered with an earthen or lime render.
The resulting walls are extraordinarily insulating—about R-35 compared to conventional walls at R-19—making them excellent for colder climates where cob alone might struggle. They’re also relatively quick to erect compared to other natural techniques. A motivated group can raise the walls of a small structure in a weekend, though the plastering and finishing take considerably longer.
I participated in a straw bale build for a community center in Scotland three years ago, and what struck me most was how accessible the process was to all participants. We had people ranging from 16 to 72 years old, with vastly different physical abilities and no prior building experience. Everyone found tasks they could handle—from bale-tossing chains where the heavy lifting was shared among many hands, to trimming bales, to mixing plaster. The finished building has become a beloved local hub, and many participants later told me they now see it differently than any other building in their community because they helped create it with their own hands.
The limitations? Straw must be kept dry (though properly detailed straw bale walls handle moisture well), and bales require a frame structure to support the roof, unlike cob which can be load-bearing on its own. Sourcing clean, construction-quality bales can also be challenging in some areas. But for those seeking a super-insulated natural building approach, particularly in colder regions, straw bale offers tremendous possibilities.
Earthbag construction provides perhaps the most globally adaptable natural building method. The concept is beautifully simple: polypropylene bags (similar to sandbags) are filled with moistened earth, placed in courses like giant bricks, tamped flat, and reinforced with barbed wire between courses for tensile strength. The finished structure is then plastered to protect the bags from UV degradation.
What makes earthbag particularly remarkable is its ability to use almost any soil type. While cob requires a specific clay-to-sand ratio, earthbags can utilize whatever earth is available on site—clay, sand, gravel, or combinations thereof. This adaptability makes it suitable for diverse environmental conditions.
It’s also extraordinarily strong. Properly built earthbag structures have survived earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods that devastated conventionally built structures nearby. The military has used similar techniques for bulletproof barracks and blast protection, which gives you some idea of their resilience.
I’ve only worked on one earthbag project—helping to build emergency shelter prototypes after a workshop in Wales—but the technique left a strong impression. There was something profoundly reassuring about the solid, tamped earth walls rising rapidly around us. The method requires less finesse than cob or straw bale, making it particularly suitable for first-time builders or emergency situations.
The drawbacks? Filling and moving the bags is physically demanding work (though there are now simple machines to help with filling). The polypropylene bags, while representing a tiny fraction of the materials in a conventional building, are still manufactured products with an environmental footprint. And like all earthen techniques, proper foundations and roof protection from moisture are essential.
Cordwood construction offers yet another approach, particularly well-suited to forested regions with plenty of timber resources. Short lengths of debarked logs (usually 12-24 inches) are laid in a bed of mortar—typically a lime-sand mix or cob—with the ends exposed on both sides of the wall and the mortar creating the structural matrix between them.
The resulting walls feature beautiful end-grain wood patterns and excellent insulation properties, as the wood and mortar create alternating thermal zones. The technique uses logs that might otherwise be considered waste—those too small, irregular, or numerous for conventional timber framing—and requires minimal processing beyond cutting and debarking.
I helped with a cordwood sauna project in Sweden where we used pine thinnings from the surrounding forest—small-diameter trees that needed to be removed anyway for forest health. The owner estimated that conventional construction would have required lumber shipped from at least 500 miles away, while our materials came from within sight of the building site. The embodied energy difference was enormous.
The challenges with cordwood include the need for properly seasoned wood (green wood will shrink and potentially compromise the wall integrity), significant mortar preparation, and appropriate design for the specific climate. It’s also slower than some other natural techniques, as each piece must be individually placed and the mortar needs setting time between courses.
Beyond these four core techniques are dozens of variations and combinations. Light straw-clay involves coating straw with a clay slip and tamping it into forms between structural members, creating well-insulated walls with less clay than full cob. Hempcrete combines hemp hurds (the woody core of the hemp plant) with a lime binder to create lightweight, insulating blocks or cast-in-place walls. Rammed earth compresses moistened earth in forms to create dense, monolithic walls with extraordinary thermal mass.
What these methods share is an emphasis on working with natural materials in ways that minimize processing, transportation, and environmental impact. They typically create structures with excellent “hygrothermal” properties—the ability to moderate humidity and temperature naturally, without mechanical systems. And perhaps most importantly, they reconnect people with the profound human tradition of creating our own shelter.
Of course, natural building isn’t without challenges in our modern context. Building codes, developed around conventional construction methods, often don’t have clear provisions for natural techniques (though this is changing in many areas as successful natural buildings demonstrate their safety and durability). Finding professionals familiar with these methods for things like electrical and plumbing installation can be difficult. And sourcing appropriate materials sometimes requires detective work and relationship-building with local farmers, quarries, and landowners.
Insurance and financing can also be obstacles, as mainstream institutions may be unfamiliar with or wary of unconventional construction. Many natural builders end up saving and building in phases rather than seeking traditional mortgages, or they find alternative financing through community bonds or private arrangements.
But the benefits extend far beyond the obvious environmental advantages. Natural buildings often cost a fraction of conventional construction—sometimes just 10-20% of the price per square meter—particularly if the owners contribute their own labor. They typically create healthier indoor environments free from the volatile organic compounds and other toxins that plague modern buildings. And they can be designed with circular principles in mind, allowing for eventual deconstruction and return to the earth rather than creating permanent waste.
Perhaps most significantly, natural building changes our relationship to the built environment. When you’ve mixed cob with your feet, lifted straw bales into place, or tamped earthbags by hand, you understand your home in a fundamentally different way. You know intimately what it’s made of, how it goes together, and how to maintain or modify it. The building becomes an extension of your own creative expression rather than a commodity purchased from distant professionals.
This personal connection explains why natural building workshops so often create lasting communities. I’m still in contact with people I met during that first Devon workshop six years ago. We share building tips, visit each other’s projects, and provide emotional support during inevitable construction challenges. Natural building creates social bonds through shared physical effort toward a tangible goal—something increasingly rare in our digital age.
Is natural building going to replace conventional construction entirely? Of course not. High-rise urban buildings, hospitals with complex mechanical systems, and certain other structures will continue to require industrial methods and materials. But for many of our housing and community building needs, particularly in rural and suburban contexts, natural techniques offer viable, sustainable alternatives that are within reach of ordinary people.
My own natural building journey continues to evolve. I’ve graduated from workshop participant to occasional assistant teacher. My cob garden office has become a conversation starter that’s inspired several friends to explore natural building for their own projects. And I’m currently designing a small straw bale studio addition to my parents’ house that will serve as my writing retreat and demonstration project.
Each time I put my hands into that cool, earthy cob mixture, I’m reminded of what drew me to this path in the first place—the simple, profound satisfaction of creating shelter from materials of the earth, using knowledge freely shared across generations and cultures. It represents a return to building practices that sustained humanity for millennia and may well prove essential as we seek more resilient, sustainable ways to house ourselves in an uncertain future.
For those interested in exploring natural building, I’d offer this advice: start small, with a garden wall, bench, or shed rather than diving straight into a full house project. Attend workshops to gain hands-on experience under guidance. Connect with local natural builders who understand your specific climate and regulatory context. And remember that natural building is as much about the process as the product—the joy is in the journey of creation, not just the finished structure.
As Maya told us during that first workshop while we admired our newly completed garden wall: “You’re not just building with earth—you’re building relationship. With materials, with each other, and with the tradition of shelter that connects us to every human who has ever shaped mud into home.” Six years and many mud-covered projects later, I couldn’t agree more.
