The business world whirls at such a pace that it’s hard to keep up with things like the latest building techniques, who’s building what, and with what.
New materials and techniques have given rise to whole new disciplines, new trades, or, sometimes, a revival of very old trades. Volunteer groups are working all over the world, doing work that no one else is doing.
We’re all familiar with the organization called Doctors Without Borders and the work they do, going into areas hit by disasters and the medical problems that so often follow —fighting cholera in Haiti, for example, or the ebola virus in west Africa.
We’re less familiar with Engineers Without Borders, although I’ve written about them once or twice. They’re a Canadian group that quietly works on third-world poverty, not by building things, necessarily, but by bringing an engineering approach to problems in countries like Ghana, Burkino Faso, Zambia and Malawi — some of the poorest nations in the world. Bit by bit, they’re making a difference.
Against this backdrop of volunteer groups doing good work, I recently came across, for the first time, a group called Builders Without Borders (BWB). Since the group was formed in 1999, it has worked on disaster relief in other parts of the world; now they’re raising money for their work in Nepal, where they will do what they can to help the impoverished nation recover from the devastating earthquake that struck in April.
BWB don’t build what we think of as conventional buildings. Instead, their specialty is what they call "natural building," by which they mean building with straw, clay, sand and other natural building materials that may be both cheap and locally available.
But when you hear about building with straw, don’t think of the children’s tale about the three little pigs whose house of straw was blown down by the big bad wolf. Think, instead, of straw bales so tightly compacted that they are slow to burn, insulate wonderfully well, and which are finished inside and out with a mud plaster that can be finished to a dull sheen.
Straw of one sort or another is available wherever there is agriculture. Usually, it’s wasted.
There are straw-bale buildings more than a century old in the U.S. and Europe. There is an organization that promotes the use of straw-bale construction. There’s even a magazine called The International Journal of Straw Bale and Natural Building.
Natural building is the name attached to construction using things like cordwood, earth-bags, adobe and rammed earth, as well as straw bales. BWB champions all of these old-fashioned alternatives to modern materials.
They help out a non-profit called World Hands. They recruit volunteers to go to Mexico and build affordable homes using available natural materials, while teaching the necessary skills to local builders.
There is the Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building group which teaches and promotes straw bale and other appropriate building methods in Pakistan. It was formed in 2006 in the aftermath of a severe quake in the area. BWB was there to help.
The importance of using natural, locally-sourced materials, is that their use can mean buildings go up quickly and easily. That’s important in places like Nepal, and Pakistan, and Haiti.
That’s why BWB is in Nepal. Their people know how to make use of the materials that are close at hand, and either cheap or free. And they know how to do it while respecting local history and customs.
It’s a far cry from building in North America, where the pace is so frantic that "history" is anything that happened before lunch.
I find the BWB’s very existence refreshing, and I wish them well in their Nepalese efforts — or wherever in the world they’re working.
Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.
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