Читать книгу The Self-Sufficiency Handbook - Alan Bridgewater - Страница 22

A natural house is one in which every aspect of the house—its form, structure, materials, and setting—are completely in harmony with the environment. The whole notion of a natural house consists of trying to get back to “the way it was.” If you look at traditional folk and tribal houses through time from all around the world, you will see that, by using local materials and technologies that have been tried and trusted for hundreds of years, and by placing buildings so that they have their backs to the wind and their faces to the sun, the people were more in tune with nature. In the winter, whole families sat around a central fire; in the summer, they sat outside under covered porches. Rooms were small and dark, but the buildings did work. The scale was right, and the color and texture related to the environment; the house was healthy and in sync with nature.

A traditional thatched roof.

Once the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, the various communities around the world rejected their time-honored building methods in favor of new and easier options. Thatched roofs were replaced by shingles, tiles, and tin; thick mud walls were replaced by brick, asbestos, and corrugated iron; houses were built in neat and narrow rows without a thought to the direction of the sun or to prevailing winds; and so on.

The natural house involves taking a fresh look at old, sound, traditional principles. Think small, natural, local, passive, healthy, spiritual, and harmonious.