Cob (material)

[14] The walls of a cob house are generally about 24 inches (61 cm) thick, and windows were correspondingly deep-set, giving the homes a characteristic internal appearance.

His techniques remained very traditional; the only innovations he made were using a tractor to mix the cob and adding sand or shillet, a gravel of crushed shale, to reduce shrinkage.

[citation needed] From 2002 to 2004, sustainability enthusiast Rob Hopkins initiated the construction of a cob house for his family, the first new one in Ireland in circa one hundred years.

[citation needed] In the Pacific Northwest of the United States there has been a resurgence of cob construction, both as an alternative building practice and one desired for its form, function, and cost effectiveness.

Pat Hennebery, Tracy Calvert, Elke Cole, and the Cobworks workshops erected more than ten cob houses in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada.

[citation needed] In 2010, Sota Construction Services in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, completed construction on its new 7,500 square foot corporate headquarters,[20] which featured exterior cob walls along with other energy saving features like radiant heat flooring, a rooftop solar panel array, and daylighting.

[21] In 2007, Ann and Gord Baird began constructing a two-storey cob house in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, for an estimated $210,000 CDN.

[22] Welsh architect Ianto Evans and researcher Linda Smiley refined the construction technique known as "Oregon Cob" in the 1980s and 1990s.

Oregon Cob integrates the variation of wall layup technique which uses loaves of mud mixed with sand and straw with a rounded architectural stylism.