Art of Sheltermaking

In these groundbreaking workshops Peter will lead participants through the design and construction techniques required for the creation of affordable, healthy and life enhancing natural buildings suited to their personal needs.
This modern evolution of the 10,000 year old vernacular tradition will focus on the creation of natural buildings suited to garden or forest settings that can be constructed without planning permission.
The workshops are ‘hands on’ offering the opportunity to directly experience the living architecture process including participation in the making and construction of a timber frame for a 13sqm (4.8×3.6m footprint) ecoShelter.  
No previous experience is required to fully participate and benefit. 
Further details on these types of buildings … The EconoSpace    Garden ecoShed   
BREAKING NEWS Oct ’24  A new series of workshops under the general title of ‘The Art of Sheltermaking’ and subtitled ‘Exploring space, time & the 5th dimension’ are currently being planned for presentation in 2025 … further details to follow.
Tommy, loading a log for milling
Tommy milling a log
Milled planks for the project
 

The Art of Sheltermaking – Women’s EditionYoga of Sound Natural Retreat , Ballyhooly, Co. CorkAugust 17&18th 2024

From his many years of teaching and assisting his students Peter has developed a theory that it was women who were the early sheltermakers. ‘My women students were consistently more daring, more imaginative, more practical, more enthusiastic, more co-operatively minded than the men … all that seemed to be missing were a few basic woodworking skills that their dad’s had never thought to impart to them … that, along with building being considered solely a man’s business, of course.‘
In a special Women’s Edition of The Art of Sheltermaking Peter is inviting exclusively female participants to explore his theory of women being the early sheltermakers. He believes it was this historic development that lit the way along the evolutionary path to the present. Such innovation and daring is again required, he believes, as we strive to live consciously and sustainably and create affordable, healthy, low-impact buildings in which to experience the Now and to shape the future accordingly.
Due to unforeseen circumstances this workshop has had to be postponed to a later date…

Sheltermaking

 

Architecture is composed of the 4 dimensions of the known world

Workshop Programme:

• Natural materials and their use

• Living Architecture principles

• Basic carpentry techniques

• The construction of framing components and their formation into a building structure

• The construction of window and door frame units and their installation into a frame

• Wall, floor and roof composition options

• Site analysis and site preparation techniques

• Methodology for the development of individual design solutions

• Proper construction sequencing and site organisation principles

• Open discussions in respect of ‘invisible’ architecture and the Course experience

• Supported with a Handout and access to extensive additional online material.

Some uses for an ecoShelter … Produce Storage; Seed/Garden Tool Storage; Art Studio; Playhouse; General Storage Room; Meditation Space; Home Office; Garden Rain Shelter; Bath House; Garden Building; Computer Room; Site Office; Writers Retreat; Love Shack; DoNothing Space …

Sheltermaking:

The creation of permanent shelter is a defining characteristic of the evolutionary path we follow. We carry within us innate knowledge of this sheltermaking process, expressing this freely as children. 

Vernacular architecture traditions are incubators of human culture, which now, it is believed, is the driver of evolution. This path, interpreted as a sustainable green future, requires buildings that can provide appropriate context for this new way of life to be understood lived out. 

Hands-on sheltemaking

When creating a building it is purpose and intention that breathe life into it. When this is understood, for example by consciously and sensitively creating an eco-shelter suited to an aspect of your life, innate sheltermaking instincts are awakened and inform the path forward. 

This creative journey, characterised as it is by the harmonisation of head and heart, reveals the immense potentiality inherent in the sheltermaking process, providing, as it does, a fresh perspective on the very nature of being.

The 2-day programme will be based on Living Architecture principles, will utilise the Peter-Post framing system in conjunction with natural materials.