Bay Area builders Sasha Rabin and Massey Burke team up with the Solar Living Institute to offer six days of hands-on training in natural building. The focus of the class is to explore the strength, flexibility, and beauty of local building materials in an urban context. The students will complete sections of several different structures using cob, strawbale, light straw-clay (slipstraw), wattle and daub, earthbag, earthen floors, and plasters. The work sessions will be complemented by slide shows and discussions of passive solar design, foundations, roofs, and integrating electrical and plumbing with earth and fiber construction. The class will be held at Villa Sobrante, an in-progress natural building retrofit project in El Sobrante, ten minutes north of Berkeley. Tuition is $350. For more information contact Massey at massey.burke@gmail.com. To register visit the Solar Living Institute website, www.solarliving.org/workshops. For more information about Villa Sobrante, visit villasobrante.blogspot.com/