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What is
Natural Building?
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Lydia Doleman is the founder and sole proprieter
of Flying Hammer. She often collaborates with other independent
contractors and sustainable businesses in Portland and beyond.
Lydia has been building since she first stole her sister’s legos at age three. With a background in ecology, sculpture and social justice her path was cleaved when she met a group of women in Missoula Montana creating the perfect synthesis of those three elements: they were building a straw bale house. |
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Lydia attained an internship with Solar Energy
International, which became a six year immersion into the rich culture
of renewable energy education and straw bale building in the Roaring
Fork Valley of Colorado. |
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Lydia founded Flying Hammer in 1999 with the recognition of the practicality, necessity and beauty of carpentry in the straw bale world.
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She has worked on a variety of buildings as carpenter, bale raiser and plasterer.
Always seeking to expand her building knowledge, she has experience as a
pipefitter, electrical worker, baker, and cabinet maker, all to support
her voracious straw bale habit. In 1999 she began teaching the hands-on
portion of the Natural Building Course for Solar Energy International,
and in 2000 added the Carpentry Course for Women that has been running
annually since. She has traveled to Mexico, Guatemala and Argentina to
work on natural building projects. "The natural building movement is crucial to human empowerment and democratizing the social and physical architecture that we inhabit. In a fragmented and dysfunctional world we can only reconnect people and places by creating structures that directly reflect localized, authentic patterns of living. Buildings have the capacity to equalize people or segregate them. The choices made in building with local and natural materials help enhance the healthy human patterns that elevate society and individuals." Lydia Doleman |
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