The California Straw Building Association’s West Coast Natural Building Conference will be held Friday – Sunday April 17th – 19th at the Shady Creek Event Center just outside of Nevada City, California.

CASBA conferences are a gathering of builders, architects, engineers, homeowners, and many other people interested in building with straw and other natural materials.  It’s a great opportunity to learn, share, and network. Laura Bartels will be our keynote speaker in 2020.  Laura has been a leader in the straw building movement since the 1990s, presented to the United States Congress on the many benefits of straw bale construction, and was one of the Colorado Straw Building Association (now Rocky Mountain Natural Building Alliance) hosts for the 2012 International Straw Building Conference in Estes Park. Conference session topics usually run the gamut from structural design considerations, how design impacts construction cost, to hands-on plastering opportunities.  Recent conference sessions have discussed the plastered straw bale wall assembly’s remarkable fire resistance as many straw bale homes survived recent California fires, finding a career in natural building, hemp-crete and light-straw-clay wall systems, and much more.

Visit CASBA’s website www.strawbuilding.org for registration information.