Come and experience our small natural building community in the cloud forests of El Salvador´s highest mountain! This workshop is being hosted by the Clouds of El Pital Eco-Tourism Collective. Our collective of five rural families from El Salvador has collectively built eight separate cob houses and cabins to host tourists in the beautiful El Trifinio Biosphere on the slopes of El Salvador´s highest mountain. The nearby cloud forest offers a beautiful site to learn about natural building techniques, permaculture,…

Dates: August 23 – August 27, 2021 (YES. We are still having the workshop as scheduled.) Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee Come and join us in beautiful eastern Tennessee for our next Introduction to Cob Workshop! We will be constructing a cob house. A perfect project for beginners and experts alike! You will get the knowledge to build cob projects scaling from smaller things, such as cob ovens and benches, up to large projects like homes and buildings. This workshop is a…

The Fundamentals of Fast Cob At a relaxed pace, we’ll learn and practice mixing and building Fast Cob.  As the week progresses, you’ll gain the skills, confidence, and inspiration to build your own structures. In 2018, a workshop of 4 people built a 12′ high by 8′ wide wall…and that was only half of what we accomplished.  Last year, a workshop of 6 built a 16′ x 12′ wood shed (6′ tall) and got the rafters on! Every workshop day,…

This workshop will be the longest, most diverse and most comprehensive one we have yet offered to our students. We will be completing a 2-story building with a criptomeria (local structural wood) post load-bearing structure, that will be permitted as a “warehouse/workspace” with cob (first floor) and light clay straw (2nd floor) walls with a covered (pocket) balcony, cob wall-embedded stairs, a tamped-cob floor, a rocket mass heater and a reciprocal green roof, our trademark workshop finishing touch. This is…

In this permaskills Natural Building Workshop we are building a PermaHome guesthouse for Kim, Lucas and Robert’s new tribe of free learning families in southern Italy. There are no skill requirements. You will learn everything you need to build an outdoor kitchen from foundation to roof. From Sep 6th – Oct 17th, 2021 we will start another round of permaskills Natural Building Workshops near Badolato in Calabria, southern Italy. These workshops will provide you plenty of opportunity to get hands-on…

In this workshop you will learn to install a “poured adobe” earthen floor from start to finish from master natural builder Michael G. Smith. These floors are beautiful, durable, inexpensive, and health-enhancing. They are easy to maintain and feel great underfoot. Their thermal mass makes them an ideal component of a passive solar design. You can even incorporate hydronic heating! This technique is suitable for natural buildings such as straw bale and cob, but can also be used to “naturalize” your…

$550 Early Bird Discount (register before August 10th, 2021) $600 Regular Fee 5% discount for family + friends participating together! INCLUDED: 3 vegetarian meals a day (with one cob oven pizza party!), coffee + tea, space to set up a tent, access to our community bathhouse (hot showers and compost toilets) **Inquire about renting a sleeping cottage for $20/night: muddauberschool@gmail.com We will cover a lot of material in 4 days! Expect to leave the workshop with the confidence and knowledge…

In this hands-on workshop, participants will be introduced to the basic principles and best practices of designing for and using lime plasters on a range of common substrates.  Students will plaster a variety of interior and exterior walls with different types of lime plaster and will experience how to prepare work areas for plastering.  Additional discussion topics will include the do’s and don’ts of lime, the different kinds of lime and pre-made lime plasters, considerations for base and finish coats,…

Delve into the world of natural plasters with two master craftspeople and teachers, Athena Steen of the Canelo Project and Michael G. Smith of strawclaywood.com. Learn to beautify and protect natural wall systems such as straw bale or cob and also to “naturalize” your conventional home with a fireproof and health-enhancing earthen finish. Clay plasters can be surprisingly durable, beautiful, economical, ecological, and are the easiest material for novice plasterers to develop their application skills. Some of the things you…

$550 Early Bird Discount (register before August 10th, 2021) $600 Regular Fee 5% discount for family + friends participating together! INCLUDED: 3 vegetarian meals a day (with one cob oven pizza party!), coffee + tea, space to set up a tent, access to our community bathhouse (hot showers and compost toilets) **Inquire about renting a sleeping cottage for $20/night: muddauberschool@gmail.com We will cover a lot of material in 4 days! Expect to leave the workshop with the confidence and knowledge…

Dates: September 27th – October 1st, 2021 (YES. We are still having the workshop as scheduled.) Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee Come and join us in beautiful eastern Tennessee for our next Introduction to Cob Workshop! We will be constructing a cob house. A perfect project for beginners and experts alike! You will get the knowledge to build cob projects scaling from smaller things, such as cob ovens and benches, up to large projects like homes and buildings. This workshop is a…