What stories are being told about building with natural materials, and how can we together practice to tell those stories? That is wat VUB Architectural Engineering, Natura Mater and Woonder are exploring with the support of Earth Plant & Fiber and the SWIFFT Collective.
Are you a professional interested in biobased or natural building and ready to make your story truly resonate? On Friday 12 June 2026, you’re invited to our interactive workshop.
Guided by sustainable storytelling expert Aline Ghys (Beyond Words), you’ll explore what makes stories powerful, how they influence behaviour, and immediately apply this to your own professional cases through exercises and peer exchange.
The workshop runs 09:00–13:00, followed by lunch and a guided tour of the Circular Retrofit Lab at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Participation is free, places are limited to 20 professionals.
At the start of our exploration, we launched a call for go-to videos and references you use to discuss natural building. That resulted in a first overview with stories from Norway to Italy.
Heritage story cabinet by biobasedcreations.com
Mud architecture by Isabelle Gerretsen
How long can straw withstand fire?
Fabriek Energiek 2.0. by province East Flanders
Circular wood practices by sirktre.no/en
Casa NP by ricehouse.it
Material Cultures in motion (multipel movies)
CNC knitted Hemp by ****rawproject.eu
Exploded View Beyond Building by kampc.be
The adventure of Emmanuel Sepulchre
We also got reactions from manufacturers vanhier.bio (NL), exie.be (BE), wearesilentknights.com (NL), isoschelp.nl (NL), … each with their own story.
Furthermore, we’re much inspired by the dozens of cases ecobouwers.be (BE-NL) and Cluster Eco-construction (BE-FR), the movie WTC A Love Story (BE), …
Interesting to follow are also The Green Times (NL), the series Houten Parels (BE), …
Based on brainstorms, literature reviews, and the inspiring examples above we made a card dek of recurring themes and associations. These cards serve a discussion starters.
They are available for download, for free! Choose your language:
And, don’t forget to listen. A common approach to uncover root causes is to ask "why" at least five times. Each response can trigger another "why," leading to gradually deeper insights into underlying issues. Really, there are no further instructions for his one.
Deep listening skills, as emphasized by Otto Scharmer (Theory U), are crucial in this process. More on this: Deep Listening or FARO's learning page.