Architecture, engineering and consulting in natural building and earth construction, from the province of Samaná, with a vision for the whole Dominican Republic.
It is a way of relating to the land, to nature and to communities: healthy, resilient, efficient, low-impact spaces, built with traditional knowledge and modern bioclimatic design criteria.
Architecture, natural building, engineering and consulting. The professional services of Somos Barro RD.
See services →Building as a tool for training, housing and community development.
See the program →Connecting people, projects and natural building knowledge across the country.
See the network →Social natural building and the national natural building network are, at heart, two sides of the same path. Over time they can grow into a real ecosystem, with job opportunities and a circular economy around earth: sale of biomaterials and adobe blocks, a job board, local businesses and barter networks among those who build with earth across the country.
Somos Barro RD grew out of more than ten years of living, building, growing food, experimenting, learning and sharing at Permachacra, our family permaculture project in the Dominican Republic — through mingas and combites (community work days) and workshops on ecological farming and natural building with everyone who came by.
Permachacra has been our home and also our learning space: a place where we kept looking for simpler, more resilient and more conscious ways of inhabiting the land.
Over these years we have worked with permaculture, syntropic agriculture, food forests, natural building, earth construction, water management, alternative energy, appropriate technologies and systems aimed at greater autonomy and resilience.
Many of the things we offer professionally today first came from real needs in our own lives: how to build better for the tropical climate, how to make use of local materials, how to grow food, how to manage water and energy, and how to reduce outside dependencies without losing quality of life.
Somos Barro RD is a continuation of that path, not a beginning: the place from which we bring that same experience to projects for other families, landowners, architects and communities, now professionally — and we keep learning alongside those who build with us.
More than a decade of practice before it became a professional service.
Permachacra is also a family story. Our son Coa was born and raised within this process. Since he was small he has taken part in the garden, the farming, the earth building and the everyday life of the project — today he already recognizes crops, materials and building processes as a natural part of his surroundings.
For us, passing this knowledge on to new generations is not secondary: growing food, understanding water, building with local materials and knowing how to create resilient spaces are fundamental skills for tomorrow’s world.
Permachacra is the space for living, practice and experimentation; Somos Barro RD is part of that same growth, now with professional, educational and community work.
Discover Permachacra → Our everyday life of permaculture, farming and learning in the Dominican Republic.Today, that experience takes formal shape in Ninette Contín and Ezequiel Goldberg, together with a team in constant training — architecture, engineering and hands-on work with earth, complementing one another.
She brings the spatial design and bioclimatic perspective to each project, and has supported natural building workshops and construction sites in a range of settings.
Architect, School of Architecture — UNIBE 
Postgraduate degree in Interior Design of Private Spaces, ELISAVA — UPF 
University Diploma in Bioarchitecture: Sustainable Design and Construction — UTN 
Focused on the technical development of each project: structure, materials and building solutions applied to earth.
Engineer, Buenos Aires Regional Faculty — UTN Workshops, our own builds and our clients’ projects in Samaná, Dominican Republic.
The area that sustains the day-to-day work: architecture, engineering applied to natural building, consulting, workshops and technical manuals — for those already building and for those about to.
It means starting from the site’s real sun and wind — not a generic formula — to define orientation, openings, eaves and thermal mass before drawing the first wall. It relies on two concrete analyses: a sun path chart with the exact position of the sun in each season, and the prevailing wind regime, which defines how to ventilate without depending on air conditioning.
A Somos Barro RD project.
A Somos Barro RD project.
We use natural building as a tool for social transformation. Each project responds to a real need for housing or community infrastructure, while generating learning and local skills.
An ongoing training program for children and young people: not isolated workshops, but a natural building curriculum organized by age and interests, meeting 1 or 2 Saturdays a month.
First steps with hands in the earth: adobe, cob, a little doghouse, models, mix tests and experiments.
The same fundamentals, adding bioclimatic design, foundations, roofs and reciprocal roofs.
Deeper technical work in bioclimatic design, foundations, roofs and reciprocal roofs, with greater autonomy on the job.
Next workshop: date to be confirmed. Experiential, hands-on and collaborative workshops at Casa Sana, Las Terrenas: earth walls with quincha, adobe and earth plasters, building with your own hands. Write to us and we will let you know when the next date opens.
Let me know about the next workshop →
Workshop 1 — Introduction to Natural Building (quincha and adobe) · July 4, 2026, Casa Sana 
Workshop 2 — Efficient Rocket cookstove (cob and quincha) · August 8, 2026, Casa Sana 
Workshop 3 — Immersive Earth Workshop (quincha, adobe and earth plasters) · September 26, 2026, Casa Sana We have gathered a list of candidate social projects to carry out. If you know of one, you can propose it.
Propose a project →Get involved through donations, funding, raffles or by joining active projects with set dates.
I want to take part →The long-term goal is not only for Somos Barro RD to build projects, but to contribute to a national ecosystem: trained people, builders, architects, technicians, communities, projects, materials, knowledge and experience, all connected.
Illustrative map, Somos Barro RD.
We are building a national network to connect natural building projects, people, techniques and experience across the Dominican Republic. It already connects three points: Somos Barro RD in Las Terrenas, Permachacra in San Antonio de Guerra and Quisqueya Permacultura in Las Galeras, Samaná.
Join the national directory of professionals and become a member of the network.
Join the directory →Our experience does not come only from courses, workshops or one-off projects. It comes from years of building, growing, repairing, experimenting and learning in our own family space in the Dominican Republic.
Permachacra has been the place where many ideas were put to the test in real conditions: tropical climate, humidity, local materials, food production, water, energy and construction.
That everyday learning has been complemented by training, workshops, building sites, travel and exchanges with other natural building and agroecology projects across Latin America — such as El Hoyo de Epuyén, in Argentine Patagonia, one of the most renowned natural building training centers in the region.
Technical knowledge is applied on the ground, trains new natural builders and connects with new opportunities — which generate new knowledge.
We work nationwide, with the province of Samaná — one of the main ecotourism hubs of the Dominican Republic — as our pilot and demonstration base.
We experiment locally, document what we learn and share it with the rest of the country through in-person workshops for self-builders, architects and construction crews, with ongoing and varied topics at each session.
This is what is active today at Somos Barro RD.
With rotating topics, for self-builders, architects and construction crews.
Expanding the workshop format to several days to train complete crews.
8 manuals published (in Spanish): adobe, earthquakes and hurricanes, ovens and stoves, bioclimatic architecture, earth walls (technical and for self-builders), earthquake-resistant houses and soil analysis — plus custom documentation.
8 articles published (in Spanish): ecotourism and the legal framework in Samaná, the cost of building with earth, permaculture, regenerative renovation, carbon footprint and more.
Adding natural builders to the directory and to the open library of manuals and courses.
Natural building · Earth construction · Dominican Republic
