The Natural Building Companion

Jacob Deva Racusin is co-owner of New Frameworks Natural Building, a Vermont-based contracting and consulting business specializing in the integration of natural materials, holistic design principles, an intentional process to create high-performance structures of beauty. Jacob also teaches a series of natural building courses through the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont. He has helped to develop the Natural Building Intensive Certificate Program, a twelve-week-long building education program in which a community of students build an entire structure in a real-world environment from start to finish in a curricular setting. Jacob has served as program director from 2008-09. Jacob is a member of Seven Generations Natural Builders, a natural building education collective that offers training in natural building technologies across the world. He is also a Certified Passive House Consultant. Ace McArleton founded New Frameworks Natural Design/Build in 2006 to offer green remodeling and new construction services that combine the best that natural building and conventional construction has to offer. He also led the company’s transition to a worker-owned cooperative in 2016. Ace is involved in sustainable building education through organizations including the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, where he has designed, directed, and instructed the Natural Building Certificate program. Ace has conducted field research on moisture and thermal performance of straw bale wall systems, as featured in the book The Natural Building Companion, and is a member of the Embodied Carbon Network. Ace started out as a union tile apprentice in California in 2001, received a BS in Environmental Science from Antioch College, and has developed and taught a curriculum uniting social and ecological justice at the Institute for Social Ecology. Ace is committed to making beautiful, ecological buildings that perform well and putting these skills into the hands of those who seek them.  

Part 1: The context for natural building

1. A brief history of natural building in the Northeast

2. Ecology

3. Beyond the building: siting and landscape design

4. Soil and stone: geology and mineralogy

5. Flora and fauna

Part 2: Building science and performance

6. Structure and natural building

7. Heat and natural building

8. Moisture and natural building

9. Fire, insects, and acoustics

Part 3: Natural building practices

10. Design

11. Before construction

12. Foundations for natural buildings

13. Framing for natural buildings

14. Insulative wall systems: straw bale

15. Insulative wall systems: straw-clay, woodchip-clay, and cellulose

16. Natural mass-wall systems: earth and stone

17. Natural plastering

18. Roofs for natural buildings

19. Floors for natural buildings

20. Natural finishes

21. Mechanicals and utilities for natural buildings