REPORT

EARTH BUILDING Online Academy 2021

Earth building training alongside an online world.

BY VERENA MAEDER

In 2014 I first heard the term ‘digital

disruption’ from my friend Johnny, who at the time was in his twenties and had just launched his own consulting business ShiftOn. He randomly invited me to one of his local business trainings, where he was advising local ‘brick and mortar’ businesses on how to leverage an online presence. His vision is to help brave businesses grow and thrive in the digital age - and I could tell that there were quite a few people in the room for whom it was a mental stretch to imagine things that today are the total norm. I walked away from that training inspired and filled with yearning, but also a bit frustrated. Our business is literally bricks and mortar - or at least super hands-on - and imagining any part of it ever living online was a stretch for me too. One of the main reasons I was feeling excited was because the promise of the world wide web is a bigger reach, more cross-fertilization, and scalability. I realized that I have such a deep love for earth and natural building, and that my motivation for all the work I have put into this over the years is the desire to contribute to real solutions to some pretty pressing problems: climate change, unhealthy living conditions, housing shortage, loss of traditional skills and resilience. I am a woman with a big vision, and I desire to extend my reach, because I have something to share. Thus started a 6 year journey to find a way to translate vague yearnings into an online offering I was able to deliver. I started by learning lots about online courses, launches, and the technology. Things have been evolving so fast in this arena, I was fascinated and often overwhelmed. I purchased quite a few online programs, and found I adore online learning. The years passed, and life kept being busy, and I kept making excuses why I wasn’t ready to create one myself. The two major obstacles for me were perfectionism and the fear of speaking on camera. I was overthinking things big time. And I was also paying too much attention to people who were saying something as tactile as earth building cannot be taught online. Thing is, it might not be the right thing for some people to learn this way, but you don’t know if you don’t try. For some it might be just what they were waiting for. Last year I was studying “Integrated Women’s Health” with a woman who is now my favourite teacher of all times (yes, I am not just all about building). Apart from starting to understand a thing or two about myself, I noticed her way of

PHOTO, TOP - Sampling earthen top coat plasters

delivering online, and showing up as herself. Something clicked. Then came lockdown and all of a sudden the world moved online. We trialled our first online workshop, a free pizza oven workshop, to figure out tech and logistics. More than 600 people signed up for that, around 40 people were on the live calls, and 5 ovens were built in real-time. The replay of this workshop is still available for free on our website, with people from all over the world accessing it every week. This makes me extremely happy! After this encouraging experience, I sat down and put the concept of what else I wanted to teach on paper, and realized it would take me around 3 months to fit it all in. I wrote: “Worst case scenario, no one signs up but I still commit to finally producing online lessons as I show up to calls live and imagine I am talking to real people. Best case scenario 20 people sign up and we have a ball.” And thus the Earth Building Academy was conceived and launched at the start of this year. We have just concluded the first round and I am overjoyed to report that the best case scenario has come true! We have aimed the program at owner builders and design professionals (architectural and permaculture design). These are the people who usually attend our hands-on workshops. While a week’s in-person immersion in our work is a great experience, we have always felt it also has its drawbacks... It often isn’t straightforward for participants to get started with their own local materials, and we still end up consulting over email/ zoom when it comes to implementation. We also have found there is a bit of outdated information floating around that doesn’t support firmly moving natural building into the spotlight it deserves. People often think it is too hard or takes too long, it is too “rustic”, too expensive, dirty, not durable enough, doesn’t perform well in earthquakes - and the list goes on. I don’t have to tell anyone here that earth can be a stateof-the-art building material and how fortunate we are to have the NZ Earth Building Standards. We have extensive experience in their good performance in extreme conditions such as wind-driven rain and earthquakes. This information needs to get out more!

REPORT The topics we covered in the inaugural class of our Earth Building Academy were: • Introduction to Earth Building • Evaluation of Soils, Soil and Material Testing • Retrofitting with Earthen Materials (LEM and Daubed Earth) • Earthen and Lime Plasters • Natural Paints • Earthen Floors • Earth Building Design • Calculations and Consents • Load-bearing Wall Systems • (Light) Adobe Manufacture and Construction • Building Site Logistics • Adobe Veneer and Wall-finishing • Deciding which Technique to choose We had two classes per week for 12 weeks: One lecture and one hands-on demonstration, with plenty of time for questions and discussion. We have a facebook group where participants can share their own projects and progress, exchange ideas and get their questions answered for 12 months. And we are going to work with people one on one if that’s required in the implementation phase. We found great delight in this form of teaching, because we could break it up into digestible chunks and spend more time teaching things in more depth than during our in-person workshops. The whole program at the moment has more than 35 hours of lectures and demos. From the feedback received so far, participants really appreciated the format and feel empowered to do their own thing now. The main challenge was to find a time that suited people in many different time zones. We were doing most

PHOTO, LEFT - Making adobe floor tiles

PHOTO, TOP - Scott Davison and Adobe Brick Construction in the open air film studio

PHOTO, RIGHT - Making natural paints

calls in the evening, but were running out of light as Summer was coming to an end. Next time we will have days getting longer, and we are also looking at setting up an indoor teaching space where we can film demos out of the weather. All the recordings were loaded to a shared course platform along with hand-outs, time-stamped Q&A sessions and case studies, where people can access them in their own time for life.

We are keen to run this program live again, rather than just turning it into evergreen courses. It was such a joy to interact with students from all over the world and from many different walks of life. It was particularly meaningful for me to have two students from Western Asia (Lebanon and Jordan), where a lot of the ancestry of some of these techniques is based. They would not be able to travel to an international conference or workshop in the current political reality, yet through the power of the world wide web we could create connections and exchange knowledge and inspiration. The other thing I loved was that 75% of the participants were women. Gender parity in construction is something I am passionate about. I feel it is important to create space for the other 50% of humanity’s talent pool to manifest visions for the built environment. We need female mentors who inspire the next generation of women in construction. AUTHOR BIO Verena Maeder is an earth building artisan with 30 years experience in the construction of earth buildings. Through her business Solid Earth Ltd she has been a driving force in natural building in NZ since 2002. Together with her partner Scott they run an adobe brick manufacture in Nelson and have to date carried out 200+ building projects in New Zealand and abroad. She has trained in Architecture as well as Building Biology and Ecology (BBE) in Switzerland. Working with her hands instead of carrying out desk-based design work is a lifestyle choice for her and she really enjoys teaching and sharing her extensive practical knowledge. Verena was part of the committee in charge of the 2020 revision of the NZ Earth Building Standards, is an active EBANZ member, and received the 2017 Tradeswoman of the Year Award by the National Association of Women in Construction.

We will open registrations again in August, for a start sometime in September. For those interested in being alerted about this, we invite you to join our mailing list: www.earthbuildingschool.com