Green Living Show Booth 2009

We just came back from a fantastic experience at the Green Living Show at the Direct Energy Centre, CNE, Toronto, April 24 – 26, 2009, where I launched our new book, soma earth HOME ENERGETIC BALANCING. As part of this launch, we opened our booth with a special blessing ceremony at 10 am. We created a temporary alter on the reclaimed wood bench in the centre of the booth. We laid sacred cloths with intricate gold patterns from the finest weavers in Bali, laid out in a specific pattern to attract ALL POSSIBILITIES. We began by smudging ourselves with sage and then smudging, clearing the booth of any left over detrimental energies. I then used my sacred shamanic rattle to clear another finer level of energy in the space in a counter-clockwise direction. We stated our specific and personal intentions of what we wanted to attract during the 3 days of the show. Then I rang a sacred bell (also from Bali) to ring with clarity and clear all that is not beneficial from the space along the perimeter. Afterward, we added joyful and playful energies to invite the positive beneficial energies through a special metal chime ball around the perimeter of the booth, now in a clockwise direction.
It was so much fun creating the booth with the Fourth Pig Workers Co-op. Glen and Mick did a great job building the booth with us for 2 full days before the show started. If the Green Living Show were to give out an award for the best, lowest embodied, most sustainable booth – I’m sure we would have won. I made a conscious choice to ‘hand build’ our booth, to emphasize the art and craft of natural building and to showcase how the SOUL of building can come through the design of spaces like this. As we were hand crafting our booth, we were astounded at how many booths were being built in non-sustainable methods. I guess it continues to be a slow growth process to get everything you do on-line with green building, no matter how ‘green’ your product might be.

‘Better than Platinum LEED’s’

Eco-Architect, Ingrid Cryns at Green Living Show Booth 2009

Our booth at the Green Living Show was made entirely from materials directly from Nature, recycled or re-used. It had the lowest possible embodied energy and is all 100% locally sourced. The logs were hauled by myself and staff from a client’s forest who was felling trees to be made for the Oval Strawbale House.

Hauling logs out of the woods

Natural round wood column detail, lashed with jute rope and supported with hand hewn wood pegs

Round post BASE detail, with natural jute rope

The pergola structure was assembled without any nails, lashed with jute rope and supported by pegs. The one large vertical round log post was stripped of bark and painted with ‘O’ VOC paint by soma earth ARCHITECT staff. The infinity loop, figure 8 design, was painted 5 times, going under and over, like a Celtic pattern. The number 5 can mean harmony, balance and divine grace. There are 5 fingers, 5 toes and 5 senses of our bodies to emphasize the ’sensuality’ of handcrafting and adding artistic hand touches to the booth design. And, the number 5 holds the other numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4 within it’s form, containing them and expressing them in it’s ability to remind us to know ourselves as an integration & interaction of all of our essential parts. A reminder that our spaces can be a living container synthesizing an expression of all that we are.

Hand stripping the bark off the logs

Painting the natural wood post with '0' VOC paints

We had three sample ‘wattle and daub’ walls that were constructed from ½” – 1” diameter saplings or branches from the same clients’ property. The 2 x 4 wood frames where made from wood found in a neighbour’s dumpster. They were doweled together with the occasional re-used nail (bent back into shape with a hammer) to ensure stability. Throughout the show, we had demonstrations by Glen of the Fourth Pig, of ‘daubing’ the wall. Daubing is a term to describe applying natural earth plasters to the stick frame structure of interior partition walls.

Wattle Walls

Detail of wattle wall

Strawbale table support

The table top is solid teak and ‘borrowed’ for the show from my dinning room. The original strawbales underneath & supporting the table, were from the Fourth Pig Workers Co-op. All cloth material is 100% cotton, was re-used from previous shows, and painted with ‘O’ VOC paints by myself and staff. The walls were hung with unbleached 100% cotton material, the ceiling had a natural orange die, re-used from a previous trade show, and the floor cloth was painted with a mixture of 3 left over ‘0′ VOC paints in a unique SACRED GEOMETRY pattern of a combination of VESICA PISCES overlapping circles and occasional random spirals throughout and at the beginning of the patterns. The geometry circles were purposely painted as going under and over, like a Celtic pattern to encourage the ‘chi’ or energetic flow into and throughout the space.

Sacred Geometry Floor pattern

...more Sacred Geometry floor pattern.....

....and more Sacred Geometry patterns

LED light wrapped in seagrass rope

All lighting was LED lighting from IKEA with seagrass rope wrapped tightly around it to add to the Natural effect. The majority of the construction of the booth was by the Fourth Pig Workers Co-op.

The booth was surrounded by six 2′ x 3′ posters displaying our natural building work – all graphic design & layout by Ingrid Cryns. Staff member, Joanne, built a small Strawbale wall model with real straw and earth clay plaster at a 1:20 scale to display at the show.

Strawbale wall model, before plaster applied

Strawbale wall model on top of booth table with various books for sale - Including LAUNCH of soma earth Home Energetic Balancing Book (left) by Ingrid Cryns.

Green Living Show 2009 Booth Construction TEAM:
soma earth ARCHITECT

• Ingrid Cryns
• Daniella Lucas
• Joanne Swisterski
• Rebecca Logan

Fourth Pig Workers Co-op

• Glen Byrom
• Melinda Zytaruk
• Matthew Adams
• Mick Paterson
• James Davis
• Shannon Muegge (+ 2 Friends assisted in constructing the wattle wall)