Permaculture Noosa is offering residents and visitors with a bent for building sustainably an opportunity to participate in a series of community cob workshops.
Participants will learn how to build with cob, a natural building material that is made of clay, sand, straw, and water and has been used for thousands of years to construct homes, buildings, and a variety of other structures, while playing an active role in helping finish the walls of Permaculture Noosa’s brand-new council-funded Pavillion Project.
The goal for this project, which is taking shape at Cooroy Community Garden, is to provide a place where people can meet, work and share the gardens, pick crops, cook and prepare food in the pavilion, and then leave with seedlings for their own gardens.
The vision is to create a hub for building climate change resilience, promoting education and awareness and encouraging community cohesion through the joy of gardening. It is designed to accommodate all age groups and activities with a focus on inclusion for the elderly and gardeners who live with a disability.
The community cob wall workshop offers a hands-on and immersive experience, where you’ll be taught by experts how to build a cob wall from scratch.
Learn the basics of sustainable building design and cob theory and walk away with a skill that you can put into practice in your own homes and businesses immediately.
Whether you are a creative who wants to build a wood-fire pizza oven or a garden wall at home, or you are an experienced builder who is interested in expanding your work into natural building, this workshop is for you.
Three experts in cob and other natural building techniques will run the full-day workshops.
Brett Grimley is the owner and principal building designer of Ecolibrium Design, which he established in 2006. With a passion for nature and architecture, Brett is driven to provide designs that are inspirational, comfortable and environmentally responsible.
Jodie Land is a mother of four young adult children, an aged and palliative care social worker, and has a passion for natural building, our natural world, writing, gardening, fermenting, sharing knowledge and encouraging connections.
Jodie owner-built a Sunshine Coast Council approved, hybrid-cob home in Maleny. With hands and feet in the mud, she was hooked. With her passion for connecting with others, sharing story and cob knowledge, Jodie is excited to be collaborating with the Noosa Permaculture cob build in Cooroy.
Elena Moctezuma is co-founder of Nativo Designs (2022) and architecture designer for Hempblock Australia. She has a Bachelor of Architecture (UASLP Mexico 2015), and a Master of Architecture majoring in Sustainability and Social Agency (UQ EAIT 2019). Elena is passionate about creating designs that integrate and help develop connections to the land.
The first four of a planned 10 cob workshops will be held 9am-3pm on 3 and 4 March and 10 and 11 March at the Cooroy Community Garden, morning tea and lunch provided.
Additional workshops will be added to the program soon.
To ensure the workshop is not only effective but also extremely informative, there is an approximate 15-person limit for each one. These workshops will fill quickly, so do not delay your booking.
For further information or to make a booking, visit permaculturenoosa.com.au/cob-workshop
