From August to October of 2015, I worked with a team of five people to build a 200 sq. ft. off-the-grid earth dome in the forest of Northwest Washington. The structure was designed by SunRay Kelley and built for our client Ranger. The building of the dome was filmed by Sharp Entertainment and the episode, Building off the Grid: Mudmen aired on DIY Network on January 19, 2016…
Godfrey & Lloyd,
Here’s my friend Paul Hedger’s enormous, no nails, framework for new building, church, in Isleham, near Ely in the Fen country!
Pics of my housetruck to come.
Sláinte,
–D
I have been looking forward to this for a while and it was not a disappointment! Lloyd Kahn is in the back of many self-builders’ cerebral toolboxes for his seminal works as Editor-in-Chief of Shelter Publications, California. His 1973 book Shelter is an incredibly detailed catalogue of building techniques through the ages, illustrated with the personal stories and evocative photos of small houses and cabins collected on his travels throughout the USA and Canada as well as Ireland and the UK…
I met Cyrus while we were working on our book Tiny Homes on the Move. He is a talented filmmaker, surfer, traveler, van hacker and an all-around awesome person. He is in the midst of a new van build using a dually diesel Dodge Sprinter van and chronicling the journey for Reef.
I first moved into a van 10 years ago. It was a practical decision. I’d been commissioned to make a 16mm surf documentary and failed to negotiate a living wage for myself during the three years it took to make it. This oversight had me surviving on cans of kidney beans and needing a rent-free place to sleep while I traveled between Australia and Los Angeles shooting and editing…
Trellis on studio built by Lloyd Kahn in Mill Valley, California, in 1962. Photo by Lloyd Kahn
Interior of house built by Lloyd Kahn, Burns Creek, Big Sur, California, in 1967–68. Posts are recycled 8 × 12 double-track railroad ties. Flooring and roof deck are 2 × 8 Monterey pine T&G from Carmel Valley. Photo by Lloyd Kahn
Hi, Lloyd,
I thought you might be interested in a photo story I created from a visit to an amazing off-grid community in southwest UK called Tinkers Bubble. It’s the most inspiring example of low-impact living I’ve seen here (and I’ve visited a lot!). Hope you enjoy.
Best wishes,
–The Bimbler
In August of 2014, eight months after I had graduated with my B.A. in Cultural Anthropology, I traveled from California to Northwest Washington to begin my first build of many. For five weeks I worked alongside natural builder Sunray Kelley as we built a two-story studio-sized cedar treehouse with nothing but our bare hands, a drill, and a chainsaw…
Interior of 30′-diameter geodesic dome built by Lloyd Kahn in 1972 in Northern California. Struts are 2″ × 3″ Douglas fir; paneling is 1″ × 6″ Douglas fir recycled subflooring from Treasure Island Navy barracks. Photo by Lloyd Kahn
Interior of house built by Lloyd Kahn, Burns Creek, Big Sur, California, in 1967–68 Photo by Lloyd Kahn
We’ll be selling our books at The Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., in May, and we decided to build a model tiny home for display. Our friend Tom agreed to make the model. It turned out that he got into it and spent over a month (not full time) on the project. He said he could have built the full-size building in the same amount of time. It’s put together with glue. Window shutters and doors open on hinges.
The full size building is 10′ × 16′, scale here is 1 inch = 1 foot, so this is 10″ wide, 16″ long. Single wall construction (no studs).
Materials:
Siding: redwood; bats: oak
Shakes: cedar
Ridge beam and shutters: redwood
Door: walnut
Door and window trim: oakIt’s a little beauty.
No idea what this is. It’s maybe 40′ tall, hexagonal, log construction with tight joints. I’ve never seen any sign of habitation. It’s on a beautiful, sunny, south-facing piece of land with lichen-covered rocks right above the (today at least) crashing waves. On Calif. Highway One, near Gualala.
Lloyd Kahn splitting shakes with a froe from redwood logs salvaged from a Northern California beach in the early ’70s. Photo by Billy Cummings
There is a festival of architecture in Scotland now, sponsored by the Fife Contemporary Arts Center. It’s called “Shelters,” and features an entire room exhibiting our work, with photo and page blowups, and our building books on tables (above). It’s open now at the Kircaldy Galleries (Kircaldy is about 12 miles north of Edinburgh, on the east coast of Scotland) and runs through June 5, 2016.
I’ll be doing a slide show presentation on May 10th, at Kircaldy Galleries, titled “50 Years of Natural Building,” chronicling our building books from Shelter in 1973 up to the present.
Send us material (photos and text) for The Shelter Blog.
