Features

EUGENE, Ore.— Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley build from the ground up – from the ground itself, in fact. 

On forested land outside Cottage Grove, they have built cob cottages, courtyards, garden walls, benches and ovens, by themselves and with their students. 

The structures are rustic, to be sure – earthen brown, thick-walled, hand-shaped, with a hint of both the gnomish and the prehistoric. 

So named by the British several hundred years ago, cob is a building material of earth, straw, sand and water (no corn involved). 

It’s mixed with the feet and hand-shaped into rounded lumps known in Old English as cobs, which then are sculpted into load-bearing walls. 

A cob structure retains this hand-shaped curvature, unlike an adobe house built of earthen bricks and mortar. 

Evans and Smiley are cob evangelists, of a sort. Their Cob Cottage Co., founded with partner Michael Smith, is considered an authority on the subject among natural-building proponents. 

The company’s second book on cob building will come out next year. 

Since 1993, the couple have held more than 80 cob workshops in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, teaching more than 1,000 people that mud dance of mixing cob and the joys of communal building. 

Cob construction combines their fields of expertise. Evans is a Welsh-born architect, while Smiley is trained as a recreational therapist. 

“I’ve focused on the health aspects of people working together, kind of like an Amish barn-raising type of approach, and the sense of community, of people working together and how empowering it is for people to build their own cottage,” Smiley said. 

On a sunny morning in their cob cottage, over tea, Evans and Smiley explain how they came to build with earth. 

“As you can probably tell, I’m British,” Evans lilts. “I’m from Wales, and cob is indigenous where I’m from.” 

Living in the Northwest for more than two decades, watching log trucks roll by, inspired him to investigate alternative building materials, which reminded him of his homeland. 

In the 1980s, Evans and Smiley went to the British Isles to do research on cob houses that were hundreds of years old, despite facing rougher winters than those in the Northwest. They liked what they saw. 

“We built a very experimental little cob place in the late ’80s,” Evans said. “We didn’t tell anybody, because we were very unsure as to how it would fare in the Northwestern climate.” 

Pleased with the results, in 1993 they built the more elaborate structure they’re sitting in now. Built on a stone foundation, the cob walls are two stories high and 1 1/2 to 2 feet thick. 

Evans explains the construction: “You make mud out of your soil, and straw and water. ... You tread it with your feet, or with a machine; some people use a tractor. 

“You take it in forkfuls or handfuls and make earthen balls called cobs – the size of a lump you can get both hands around – and you slap them on the wall.” 

Windows and door shapes are molded to allow space for frames and glass, he said, and several styles of roof are compatible. 

“If you want, you make an earthen floor of a very similar mixture,” he said, indicating the smoothed, chocolate-brown floor beneath our feet. 

The cottage took about five months to complete, from June to November. “Technically, it’s not a house; it’s a garden cottage,” he stresses. A large main house sits beside the cob compound, which has no bathroom, for one thing. 

The cottage’s sitting room has built-in cob bookshelves, nooks and a wide, low bench covered with brightly colored cushions, plus a table and chairs besides. It shares the downstairs with a cozy kitchen. The upstairs contains a bed, dresser and separate office space. 

Most of the noncob materials are recyclables. The beams, framing and some furniture are made of salvaged wood: madrone, Pacific yew, Pacific dogwood, cedar. 

The kitchen counters are made of thick, salvaged cutting boards and salvaged ceramic tile worked into a mosaic. 

The cottage has electricity and running water; the pipes and wires are molded in the earth walls. With floor-to-ceiling windows facing south, the cob walls and floor absorb some solar heat during the day. A wood-burning stove provides heat in winter. 

All of this is packed into a snug 119 square feet. “Round feet,” Evans corrects. 

And, Smiley points out, “It’s in the shape of a heart.”