Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Archive for “Natural Building” category
Showing results 21 - 25 of 61 for the category: Natural Building.
15 Mar 2010
A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here. As someone who has, for many years, been fascinated by local, natural building materials, this is a fascinating piece of research, one of the first things I have seen which starts trying to calculate the financial benefits to an area of moving towards more locally-sourced building materials.
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2 Nov 2009
Spent the half term weekend in West Cork in Ireland, revisiting people and places that made up my life between 1996 and 2005. It was like visiting a parallel world, a ‘Sliding Doors’-like glimpse at what could have been, offering reflections on where I am now and where I have come from. I will write in more detail about a few aspects of things I saw there over the next few days, but today’s post is about The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability, the eco-hamlet cum sustainability training centre we were involved in setting up from about 1998 onwards. Here, in a nutshell, is the story of where it came from, and what has happened there since we upped and moved to Totnes.
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1 Jul 2009
As part of the Totnes EDAP, we are creating this table (below), by way of illustrating the wealth of new employment possibilities that could be created in a community that seriously embraces the potential of Transition. There will of course be hundreds of things we have neglected to include. In the light of the continued ‘sharp contraction’ of the UK economy, we are arguing that the only way the area can revive its fortunes will be via. the Transition approach. One of the perks of doing Transition Culture is the ability to run work in progress by you to get your thoughts and input, and to have things that I hadn’t thought of pointed out to me. Please post your thoughts and additional livelihood opportunities below. Thanks.
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24 Feb 2009
I have wanted to visit the Wintles in Bishops Castle in Shropshire for many years. It has won many awards over the years as a pioneering ‘green’ housing development. I knew its creators, Bob and Carol Thomlinson, many years ago, and followed the project’s early stages, including its design phase. It was conceived of as a low energy, sustainable housing complex, one that was designed in such a way as to create a strong sense of community. Last week I was in Bishop’s Castle for a talk (which went very well), and finally I was able to have a good look around the place and see how it had turned out.
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20 Oct 2008
For many years I have taught permaculture courses, and like many who do so, I start my courses with the Tale of Two Chickens. This is a very useful way of looking at inputs, outputs, and the science of maximising beneficial relationships, and it concludes with describing one of permaculture’s Holy Grails, The Chicken/Greenhouse. However, now, as I stand on the verge of actually trying to make a chicken greenhouse, I am finding it very difficult to find actual working examples of chicken/greenhouses. Might I have spent years unwittingly promoting a permaculture urban myth?
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A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here. As someone who has, for many years, been fascinated by local, natural building materials, this is a fascinating piece of research, one of the first things I have seen which starts trying to calculate the financial benefits to an area of moving towards more locally-sourced building materials. 
