Natural Living in the New West

By Stick, By Straw, By Brick: The Resurgence of the Natural, Hybrid Home

By Tonya Poole, 3-04-06

The requisite Three Little Pigs reference might be lost on anyone who grew up after my generation, but recent home building trends – once reserved primarily for the dry and sun-drenched southwest – are cropping up (no pun intended) all over, punching holes in the old fairy tale and suggesting that if they had put their heads and materials together instead, they could’ve licked the big, bad wolf.

Today we’re the Three Little Pigs: energy-hungry, self-serving Americans, to wide varying degrees, who love their consumption and conveniences and the competition with our neighbors to build and to be the biggest and best in town. Our big, bad wolf has shape-shifted into rising energy costs, supply shortages, depleted natural resources and, many believe, a looming threat to the way of life we’ve become accustomed to over the last 50 years.

Whether that’s true or it isn’t remains to be seen, though the shift toward sustainability seems to be leaking out into the mainstream. Even those who have worked hard to shun environmentally-sensitive lifestyles and building practices on principle (it’s un-American in some circles, after all, to be consumption-conscious) are now finding themselves pinched or left behind as the costs of fuel, heating and cooling, even real estate has most everyone looking for innovative alternatives – whether they like it or not.

But neither innovation nor alternative are always synonymous with moving forward into new territory, nor do they always mean leaving good things behind. Sometimes it’s a glance backward at the principles and ideologies that worked many years ago, and were lost to the trampling of progress and technology and the desire to achieve bigger, better, faster, more. More than a century ago homes in every region were built using the materials available naturally and recycled from land close at hand. Mountain regions used log and timber framing, the Midwest often used straw bales and the southwest, of course, adobe brick. Each recycling system had its own benefits, and each was, for its area, a sturdy, long-lasting and efficient way to build. Many of those homes are still standing as testament.

But the development of building technologies and the desire for fast housing and faster profits quickly edged out the longer and more arduous process of natural building - until recent years as we’ve watched it make a comeback, first as an expensive boutique industry and then more recently as a growing mainstream market in light of necessary lifestyle shifts.

Technology’s greatest use in building today seems to be less about enabling unnatural building, and more about making natural building work more comfortably and efficiently. Instead of relying on only one building methodology (adobe, straw bale, timber…), smart designers are finding they can double, even triple the benefits of their materials by mixing them in a hybrid structure. The outstanding insulation values of straw bale infill matched with the thermal mass properties of adobe brick is a formidable weapon against heating and cooling costs – some homeowners citing as much as a 20-90 external degree range of comfort without heating or cooling of any kind. Add to that the structural durability of large logs and timbers – a product that lends itself well to recycling, requires fewer pieces of wood and little to no additional milling or material to cover up – and you’ve got a durable, sustainable, and aesthetically dramatic home that, if done properly, uses very little energy, very few synthetic materials and can be easily owner-built.

Here in the southwest, natural and hybrid homes are in many ways old news – the weather and landscape have always been friendly territory for sensitive materials like adobe and straw. But advances in knowledge and technology have made them more accessible in and able to stand up to colder, wetter climates like the northern Rockies, New England, even the Pacific Northwest. And creative builders like EcoNest in Tesuque, New Mexico, are aware that biodegradable doesn’t necessarily mean boring, nor does natural mean going without. Natural homes are popular in the high-end market among homeowners who value fine living, but choose not to do so at the price of their surroundings. Beautiful sunrooms double as passive solar heating utilities; large, dramatic stone fireplaces serve as conductors of thermal mass and exquisite tile floors hide energy-efficient radiant floor heating. Even breathtaking native gardens can easily be fed by recycled gray water systems.

It’s no longer necessary to think of living in harmony with the land as a sentence to return to the days of Little House on the Prairie or the Swiss Family Robinson. Your plasma TV can theoretically run on photovoltaic solar panels, and you can still have your four-headed shower if you don’t mind the waste water trickling out to feed your begonias. No matter what your vice or taste, the excuses not to build naturally continue to dwindle and the conditions we’re facing now and in the years ahead have rejuvenated the market, bringing prices down, supply options up, and have taken sustainability straight to the foundation of many of our lives.

But equally as important as pragmatic sustainable living to us, as we prepare to build our own hybrid home in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, is the unique and powerful opportunity to ditch the remote, put away the microwave and get out of the car – and get back to a little manual labor, connecting with the progress of our lives and building our futures with our own hands.

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