Luke and Emily's Chicken Coop

This project was started during the Ecosa summer program, and was finished by the Fall 2010 class. The project building methods, allowing students to work together on a small structure employing cordwood, cob, limfor our hands-on construction course, a series focused on natural or alternative e plaster, earthbag or dirtbag construction, and reclaimed wall cladding.

The Ecosa Institute was asked to build a chicken coop for Luke and Emily, a young professional couple in Prescott, as a project that could be a a laboratory for the students to hone their architectural drawing skills, and experience the world of natural building methods. A chicken coop is a perfect project because it is small, serves a useful and vibrant purpose, and can be built without the constraints of building codes; the perfect atmosphere for students to get their hands dirty and learn.

Our coop is designed as a laboratory of natural and sustainable building materials. A post and beam structure enables Ecosa students to experiment with a patchwork of wall types below.

The posts were gathered from the neighboring Prescott National Forest, standing-dead pine trees. Beams were salvaged from a local salvage yard, as are the door and windows.

The roof is durable, recyclable corrugated steel, ready to capture rainwater in barrels for the chicken’s use. The foundation is dry-stacked CMU, donated by a local mason, filled with rocks instead of mortar for easy disassembly at the end of the building’s life.

The north wall is cordwood, from the client’s woodpile, also gathered from the adjacent forest. Cob mortar was used on the cordwood wall to minimize the use of carbon-intense materials like cement. Clay soil came from the neighboring town of Dewey, AZ, and was free because it’s not typically desirable. The east wall is a combination of straw bale construction covered with lime plater.

Pictures of the construction process:

As the students leave the site with their new skills, Luke and Emily are given a chicken coop that will surely keep the chickens warm in the coldest of winters.