Within the Nomad City project we are constantly researching how to minimize our impact on the environment. When building new structures or houses we always try to incorporate new (and old) sustainable materials or technologies that can help us achieve this goal. After living in various small structures Elke and Stef decided to build a new small home in which they can live together, not just with each other, but also with the natural world. The outer wall of the house will be used for various experiments like composting, water filtering, solar power, welcoming insects, birds and other living creatures… They also want to construct this house using as many natural and compostable materials as possible. Below you can follow their process.
1. Planning
Before we started building we made a lot of designs to get an idea of what we wanted our home to look like. We found a lot of inspiration online but we have also been living in small structures for many years which helped us in understanding what is really crucial for us to be present inside our home. When we finally got all these elements on a list we started drawing. We used the free online version of Sketchup to draw the final design of the house. This helped us a lot in building the structure since we could easily hide or show all the layers of the house and quickly measure all of the dimensions we needed.
