A Natural Building Symposium and Special Panel Event is taking place at the Guelph Organic Conference showcasing the connection between ORGANICS with NATURAL BUILDING. This will be taking place on Thursday, January 30, 2014, 6 - 9 PM.

At this inaugural Natural Building Symposium, Architect Ingrid Cryns will host an introduction to Natural Building in Ontario with panelists and professional colleagues; Ben Polley a natural builder from Harvest Homes and Melinda Zytaruk a natural builder from The Fourth Pig Workers Co-op. The panelists will present their building projects built with straw or hemp bales, earth plasters and other healthy and sustainable building materials. They will explain the essential concepts of natural building from scratch as well as several examples of local retrofit projects. The intent is to showcase the organic relationship of natural building at the conference and to grow it larger every year.

The current state and need for low impact, low carbon footprint, sustainable building in Canada will be explored offering an introductory overview of practices and structures of natural building in Ontario. Topics introduced are: resilient retrofits, use of materials, heat and cold, use of straw, fire and flood, homesteading, building codes and more.