Paper short abstract:

Eco-building provides fertile ground for considering people's processes of place-making and what it means to 'be at home'. Attentive to the materials of eco-construction and to builders' embodied and sensory engagements with them, this paper examines the particular 'way' forged by such eco-dwellers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the creation of experiences of home and the constitution of 'ways of being in the world' through recourse to the literal: to the work of building one's own home and the effort to build it ecologically or sustainably. Exploring the beliefs and practices of a certain group of ecological self-builders, building is shown to be - as the phenomenologists claim - fundamentally linked to thinking and dwelling. The eco-house that is self-built (often by hand) is not only the dweller's 'first universe' as Bachelard famously described it, but also a statement of intent and a guide for future ways of being-in-the-world. The builder-dwellers' sensory engagement with building materials and the social nature of their labour are central to making the process of construction one of being at home in the environment-world (a place at once local and global, human and non-human).