Village Building Convergence 11!

The Planet Repair Institute was the birthplace of the first ever Village Building Convergence project when our cob sanctuary was built in 2001.  This year, during the eleventh annual VBC between May 27th-June 4th, Planet Repair was a hub of activity once again!

The creation of our cob sanctuary at Planet Repair in 2001 marked the birth of the Village Building Convergence, an annual festival that has now facilitated hundreds of placemaking projects citywide.

Dozens of people visited the Planet Repair to help out with our projects throughout the ten day long festival, including The Mud Girls, and friends of ours from the Bullock’s homestead among many others.  We would like to thank everyone for their support and friendship. We completed a range of fun projects which included a Natural Building retrofit and the creation of a community compost demonstration site! We also got to host Starhawk for the week, and participated in a visioning session for her efforts to turn her classic book The Fifth Sacred Thing into a film!

Our lead natural builder Eva Rose Miller returned this year and facilitated the ten-day long work party to complete the insulation of our house using a straw-clay slip. This technique, also known as Light Straw-Clay, consists of lightly massaging straw in a soupy clay liquid, and then stuffing it into an eight inch cavity that is built out with simple trusses on the interior and exterior of the wall.  This technique creates an effective insulation (rated R33) where none existed previously, that will keep us cozy warm in the winter and will far exceed the insulation requirements as set out by the city’s building code. In fact, thanks to the efforts of the city’s natural builders and passionate advocates, light straw clay has now been approved as a legitimate building practice by the city of Portland!

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