Don't you just love playing with Flickr? I was clicking around the other day and stumbled across this awesome house made from something I'd never heard of before: cob!

This house isn't made of corn cobs but of a mixture of clay, straw, and sand. Cob is sort of like the mixture used to build adobe homes, and it's super resilient! Structures made of cob can last hundreds of years.

Building a typical home takes a lot of materials, many of them not the most eco-frienldy. Natural building materials like cob are awesome because the ingredients can be sourced locally and don't contain harsh chemical additives. Not only that, structures made from natural materials can help you reconnect with nature in a way that conventional homes just can't.

I just love the curved walls and overall simplicity of this house! What really wowed me, though, was the awesome skylight:

Gorgeous, right? It almost feels like a tree house!

The other cool thing about materials like cob is that they're perfect for the DIY-inclined. There are all sorts of ways to learn more about this kind of thing, too. You can go all out, taking a a cob building workshop or doing a green building internship, but you can keep it simple, too. If you're feeling really DIY, maybe read up on the process and go the trial and error route with a smaller structure like a garden wall or an outdoor pizza oven.

Image Credits: Creative Commons photos by smallape