Post-natural building has substantial benefits for sustainability, cost reduction and energy saving. There is pressure to re-use building materials, reduce waste and create energy-efficient buildings. Post-natural building can become a prominent feature of city development. It emphasises natural building processes (like earth building), the re-use of materials and the co-evolution of the human systems with the ecosystem.
What skills and resources were you able to draw from the community for this project?
Community members and students provided much time and imagination in creating grassroots and bottom-up development practices by using available resources from the immediate environment. Waste was used in vast quantities and as such, is seen as a valuable resource turning into worth.
The challenges
Post-natural development builds on some of the advantages associated with self-help shelters and emphasises the importance of eco-building with waste to advance ecological worldview by supporting a range of human development efforts. Waste combined with traditional indigenous building technologies can provide shelter and encourages artistry and imagination, gets members of the community to work together, promotes social empowerment, improves physical and mental health, and fosters enjoyment.
Addressing the challenges
The value of the research lies in the acceptance of eco-building, with the combination of waste by developing ecological worldviews. By turning housing construction into art, individuals show that turning imagination into a physical artefact, social empowerment is promoted, enjoyment is created, and physical and mental health benefits are achieved. Post-natural building provides shelter, which does much better than informal houses constructed with corrugated iron or the governments subsidised brick and mortar provided.
The achievements
Through volunteering activities, personal development and human-centred approaches are highlighted. By giving generously to others and transferring skills, ecological worldviews are introduced as alternatives in a world that prioritised capitalist-driven mechanistic approaches to development.
Johannesburg, South Africa
