THE FILM STARTED OUT AS a personal project when I first apprenticed with earth architecture pioneers Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley in the rainforests of Oregon in the summer of 2004. At that time, I realized that natural building was going to be one of the most potent forces that could help shelter us from the converging catastrophes of the early twenty-first century. But it was being done out in the backwoods by hardcore deep ecologists, unaccessible to anyone else who hadn’t heard of it already. This was a grassroots movement that was never going to get good mainstream media attention; it deserved to tell its own story.

SO I BEGAN TO FILM what I saw and what I did, so that I could explain to all of my friends and relatives why building houses out of mud could be strong and beautiful, practical and affordable. It’s not easy to overcome most people’s prejudices towards dirt! In our hyper-regimented society, there is a serious stigma towards materials that are not industrially-produced and standardized. Anything out of the ordinary will usually be viewed with some suspicion, and anything that even remotely invokes the image of a ‘hippie’ house is going to get a lot of people’s guards up.

TO TELL THE STORY convincingly, I would have to prove that as a fundamental building material, unadulterated earth wasn’t only an appropriate choice for the third world, but that it had deep roots in Northern Europe and the Southwestern States, as well. To show that it could be built many stories high, I had to journey to the Middle East, and to show that it could withstand awesome earthquakes, I had to travel to the West Coast. To understand the origins of earthen architecture, I had to immerse myself in continental Africa, and to deal with legitimate questions about gentrification in the future, I had to really get to know inner city ghettoes.

IN MANY WAYS, I WOULD have much preferred to have just built my own house out of cob and be done with it, to just be the change that I want to see in the world. By now I would have long since finished building my dream home, wherever that might be in the world, sitting around the fire, baking bread, maybe taking care of a couple of goats. But there was a vacuum that desperately needed to be filled, and no one was stepping up to the plate, so I filled that niche as best as I could. And I have to say, I had a hell of a lot of fun traveling all around the world, meeting some amazing people, and learning a lot more than I would have from just staying in the same spot for four years.

THERE IS NO WAY THAT this film could possibly have been made all by myself. Computers got old and needed to be replaced, cameras broke down and new ones needed to be bought. When you’re in a foreign country and you don’t speak the local language, it’s helpful to have a traveling buddy who can take still shots while you shoot video, and vice-versa. Even if you’re using simple equipment, it also doesn’t hurt none to have another body to help lug it around across the continent and beyond. And when you’re only working intermittently on ecological activist jobs that exactly don’t pay hand over fist, there is no shame in availing yourself of ideological supporters who are willing to you get from place to place.

MANY PEOPLE CAME TOGETHER and contributed their skill sets to the project, because they believed that people need to know that the way that we house ourselves in North American is patently wrong-headed. They know that we need to look to all of our ancestors that used their ingenuity, and the common materials that were the closest — and to our best and brightest mad scientist environmentalists — who are using their ingenuity, and common materials that are the closest! Among these people, Peter held the vision, and contributed of his own time, energy, and resources to ensure that this important film would be seen by as many people as possible.

SO INVITE YOU TO WATCH the film FIRST EARTH – Uncompromising Ecological Architecture. Right now, while the DVD is still in post-production, you can see the film in its entirety in a YouTube-embedded frame on the official website for the film. Just click on the link “Videos”, and you can watch all twelve parts in succession. The website is also filled with additional material, hundreds of still photos and extended interview footage with some of the most important pioneers of the natural building movement. And if you enjoy the film, feel free to share it with anyone you wish. Happy viewing! – Compliments of Green Apple Landscaping.

WHEN I FIRST STARTED STUDYING ecological architecture, I set my sights on straw bales. I’m sure you’ve heard of these — by this point straw bale buildings have pretty much completely penetrated the consciousness of even mainstream society. Because the bales are rectangular blocks that are the by-product of an industrial process — removing the seed from the chaff in wheat fields — they relatively easily lend themselves to the construction of homes that are also rectangular and industrially-built, the kind that we are used to aesthetically, and have come to demand for reasons of convenience. But if we look past the industrial paradigm, there is another option that is far more ecological. Because it’s rough around the edges and demands more people participation, it hasn’t been as popular with the masses. But without doubt, it is the material that uses the least amount of fossil fuels and creates the least amount of pollution. This material is mud.

NOW WHEN I SAY THE PHRASE “earthen architecture”, the first thing you think of is probably a mud hut. And certainly, mud huts are sterling examples of ecological housing. Everyone in the indigenous village knows how to build and repair one of these out of locally-sourced natural materials. They’re adequately warm in the winter and comfortably cool in the summer, without any artificial air-conditioning system. The thatch roofs last just as long as any other modern conventional roofing material; they repel heavy rains for fifteen years or more before they have to be replaced. And they don’t off-gas any toxic chemicals, something you cannot say about any industrially-produced building at all. Here is a classic example of a mud hut par excellence in a small Oromo village outside of Addis Ababa. That’s Peter on the far right — we took these photos on a trip to Ethiopia three and a half years ago.

BUT EARTHEN BUILDINGS ARE NOT only the purview of African peoples. For example, the house below is made of the exact same materials as the house above — clay, sand, and straw… but it was built over 300 years ago in Devon, England! And it isn’t a empty, unused museum piece — the house is still lived in by a family of four, and it’s furnished not unlike any other modern dwelling in the UK, as you can see in the interior photograph. We shot these images on the same continent-hopping eco-education trip in the winter of 2006. And this house is not a bizarre exception to the rule; there are over a hundred thousand earth-homes just like it across the United Kingdom that remain in use to this day. So Canadians that trace their direct ancestors to Northern Europe also come from a rich cultural tradition of building healthy houses out of earth.

NOW LET ME BLOW YOUR MIND open even wider: If you think that third-world mud huts and quaint cottages in the countryside are all that earth is capable of as a building material, then you are tragically misinformed! From Ethiopia I flew on to Yemen, the first country in Arabia to become a democracy. Deep in the deserts, there are whole cities that are hundreds, even thousands of years old, dating back from biblical times — cities filled with earthen skyscrapers! I am not joking — I went to a couple of construction sites, and they still build in this way, out of sun-dried adobe brick. There are no steel girders or concrete beams; only unmilled wooden poles to hold up the earthen floors above. The walls may be up to a meter thick at street level, but they rise six, seven, or eight stories high — veritable Manhattans of Mud! I took the photos below, starting from the one in the top-left corner and continuing clock-wise, in the towns of Hajarin, Shibam, and Kataira, respectively.

HERE ON THIS CONTINENT, we have our own native natural building tradition that uses sun-dried earth bricks, as well. During the Arab occupation of Spain, the Spaniards learned of the brick, “al-dob”, which they pronounced “adobe”. And when the Spanish in turn colonized North America, they brought this building technology along with them to the lands that they conquered. Settlers built the oldest house in the USA that is still standing, in Sante Fe, New Mexico, out of adobe bricks. And when they arrived in the area that would come to be called the southwestern United States, they found that the First Nations people of Taos Pueblo had already been building their homes out of earth for at least five hundred years, by that point. The Pueblo and the whole region still retain their distinct architectural character, even after all this time. I captured these images of the Indian village two summers ago.

OKAY, HAVE I THOROUGHLY proven that earth is a most amazing building material that deserves careful consideration? Well, about twenty-five years ago, a few people on the West Coast were certainly convinced of it. They amalgamated their knowledge of construction techniques from around the world, did research and development into appropriate technologies, and developed the earth building style called Cascadia Cob. The result is essentially the same as all of the other earth sciences — thick walls of sub-soil muck — but what sets it apart is that it’s often curvilinear, spirallic. Inspired by deep ecology and a counter-culture ideology, these cute little hobbit houses often feature whimsical imagery and sculptural details in bas relief. Here are some photos I took in 2004-5 of home-grown Canadian cob cottages built within the city limits of Vancouver.

PRETTY AWESOME, EH?