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Re: GBlist: Re: StrawClay



> >>Shortly afterward I (Buzz)
> >>went to India where I investigated various natural building methods in a
> >>country that prides itself on low-capital home-grown technologies.
> 
> >I'd (Bill) be interested in hearing what you felt were the most exportable
> building
> >methods over there.  (I doubt many americans will want to build dung huts,
> >for instance).  It seemed to me that the majority of the buildings that I saw
> >were brick masonry with plaster (this was in the New Delhi area)
> 
> Quite right.  Brick and concrete is everywhere (as in about 90% of the
> world, wood is never a primary material).

Buzz, et al:

I'll try to be brief with a slight digression. I recently was in south India (Kerala and Tamil Nadu, went to a 
conference on sacred architecture and ancient traditions in building) and got to see another side of India. I 
went through places that actually had no brick or concrete (no electricity or phones either.) Buildings were 
all made of palm fronds, palm fiber, and a few assorted wooden posts. Simply, the natural materials available, 
and architecture appropriate for that environment (mild to hot temperatures, moderate to high humidity.)

Perhaps more important - and far more difficult to assess - we must understand that their ways of building 
springs from their entirely cyclical mode of living and thinking. People's lives are tied to tradition, to 
hierarchies, to the seasons, to an uncanny order. They would be entirely incapable of answering one of our most 
common phrases, "So what's new?" However there is a deep sense of wholeness and belonging that is awesome. 

We on the other hand are bound by a linear psyche. There is no central (sacred) point of reference...the only 
refernce is where we are now and where we want to go; everything else, "it's all relative" and "do your own 
thing". It has allowed us to make extraordinary advances in technology and creative accomplishments, but at a 
stunning price of being free to destroy our ancestry, traditions, earth, relations, and sense of Wholeness.  

In some ways, we in the west may never be able to come up with successful sustainable solutions unless we also 
address the underlying spiritual crisis of being singularly linear and cutoff from a sense of wholeness.  
Americans don't want to live in dung houses...you're right, we can't just "go back". But we do need to find 
ways to bridge the gap between linear and cyclical thinking. Finding the appropriate techniques and technology 
alone will be only window dressing on our linear flight through chaos.

I hope this is not too far out of the parameters of this discussion group, and I promise not to pontificate 
further, but I feel it is an underlying condition that needs to be recognized here.

Seth Melchert
Master Builders
Oakland, CA
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