In April of 2025, a neighbor’s unattended open flame spread to the construction site of the Tiger Track Ecolodge in southern Nepal, designed by the Montana-based nonprofit Building Bureau. In the rural and impoverished buffer zone of Bardiya National Park lacking a municipal fire department, the structure’s thatch roof burned for hours until hundreds of volunteers extinguished it by forming a bucket brigade. While the roof was destroyed, the building’s rammed earth walls remained intact.

In Nepal, kacchi, from the Hindi for “raw,” refers to houses made from traditional materials like mud or thatch; pakki, from the Hindi for “cooked,” describes buildings made of mass-produced materials such as cement, fired brick, and tin roofing. These terms also carry cultural associations, with kacchi suggesting something that is temporary or crude and pakki anything proper and upstanding or reliable.

Building Bureau founders Tyler Survant and Anna Leshnick will discuss their experience with the resilience of natural building materials in the context of Nepal. How can the vulnerability of natural building materials to fire, flood, and earthquakes compete with the perceived permanence and progress of industrial materials?

Alignment with conference theme | This talk will consider the physical resilience of natural buildings but also the resilience of the communities that occupy them. While the work cited is in Nepal, the subject relates to renewed interested in earthen construction following the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.

AIA CEU

This session explores the resilience of natural building materials, such as rammed earth and thatch, through the case study of Nepal’s Tiger Track Ecolodge. Presenters examine material performance in fire, flood, and earthquakes, and highlight how community engagement supports both structural and social resilience.

Prerequisite Knowledge:
None Required

HSW Justification:
This course addresses Health by highlighting strategies that protect occupants from fire, flood, and seismic hazards; Safety by demonstrating design and material choices that enhance structural resilience; and Welfare by emphasizing community engagement, culturally informed design, and sustainable, long-lasting building practices that support human and ecological well-being.

Learning Objective 1:
Identify the vulnerabilities and resilience of natural building materials in response to fire, flood, and seismic hazards.

Learning Objective 2:
Analyze how cultural perceptions of “permanence” influence material selection and community adoption of natural building methods

Learning Objective 3:
Evaluate strategies for enhancing structural durability and occupant safety in climate- and disaster-prone regions.

Learning Objective 4:
Explore the role of community involvement in supporting resilient and adaptive building practices.

Tyler Survant, AIA is an architect at the nonprofit Building Bureau and an Assistant Teaching Professor at Montana State University’s School of Architecture. Anna Leshnick is a cofounder of Building Bureau and a certified Passive House Consultant with the North American Passive House Network in cooperation with the Passive House Academy.

Anna Leshnick, PHCC is a designer and co-founder of Building Bureau. A certified Passive House Consultant with the North American Passive House Network in cooperation with the Passive House Academy, Anna is trained in energy-efficient design principles, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality. Originally from Moscow, she earned a degree in architecture from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before relocating to the United States in 2018.

Prior to Building Bureau, Anna worked on the preservation of Tel Aviv’s White City, a UNESCO World Heritage site noted for its regionalist adaptation of Bauhaus “International Style” architecture to the cultural and climatic context of the Mediterranean. She also worked with an office in New York noted for its humanitarian work around the world. Anna served as 2024 Visiting Scholar at Montana State University’s School of Architecture. ■