One of the question marks our network deals with is which local resource is suitable for which productive reality. On one hand the use of natural materials is an invitation for manual work: the processed products are mainly nontoxic and most of the techniques are simple enough to be learned by everyone with the right motivation and a few purposeful training sessions.

For the weekend between the weeks 3 and 4, the organizing team proposed a field trip to Abruzzo, one of Italy’s regions that still hosts an important heritage of traditional raw earth houses. Main destination of the study trip was the town of Casalincontrada near Chieti, a small town that is home to more than 120 old earth houses.

We are definitely going into the hot phase of the workshop Design and Build with Wattle-and-Daub and Light Straw. The second week is over, after some hours of hard work and fascinating discoveries about our principal material, the earth. We are proud to announce that we made impressive progress!

The program for the LearnBIØN course #2 includes four thematic conference sessions, the BIØNTalks. The first meeting has been held on 6th of July in the charming frame of Palazzo del Gatto in Casaprota

The first week of LearnBIØN course#2 Design and Build with Wattle-and-Daub and Light Straw is concluded. An enthusiastic group of participants from different countries and with different professional backgrounds have had the possibility to assess the features of locally available earth samples through empirical tests, to understand the working principle of a wattle-and-daub frames build with the quincha-technique and to accomplish all the necessary working steps for it practically.

Design and Build with Cordwood is a 4 week building workshop. During the workshop we will build a cordwood building to suit the needs of the newly established organic farmers in Östertälje.

The last week of the course has arrived. With it comes a central part of the learning process, learning the secrets behind building a vault. To help us sharing this knowledge we received the architect Miguel Rocha from CEDAC Terra that counts with numerous experiences with arches and vaults in Portugal and Spain.

During the third week of the course Design and Build with CEB the masonry with 1 and 1/2 brick was continued until arriving to 140cm. This was the starting point of our arches with 170cm diameter. The centering was made by a local carpenter and is a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional ones, instead massive wood, oriented strand boards (OSB) were used to shape the arches form.

It was Saturday (06.05) early morning and difficult to wake up, but the reason was strong: moving south towards the border to visit the office and building company Betão e Taipa, located at Serpa, still in Alentejo region, Portugal.

Our common principals

The Learn BIØN – A Handbook Guide for Hands-On Learning from the Building Impact Zero Network was made during our first Erasmus+ project LearnBIØN.

Here we collectively wrote down the common ground for the network, our principals. Our aim is to share knowledge, practices and experiences, in order to contribute to the built environment and to our communities.

Another week has passed at the Design and Build with CEB course in Portugal. It was the time to take out the foundation’s formwork and see the result of the previous week of work. It seamed like a desirable pool, that was quickly filled with gravel. A layer of juta fabric and a regularization bastard mortar (cement and lime) helped prepare the surface for the upcoming masonry.

For the project that we are planning to build in July, with the participants at LearnBIØN Workshop#2 Build and Design with wattle-and-daub and light straw and the local community of Casaprota, we still need some canes.

On Sunday 14th of May, we would like to invite you everybody to a study and work day in the middle of the Sabina hills. The one day seminar includes hands-on activity and a short theoretic introduction on building with canes.

The LearnBIØN project entered in its active phase with the first Build and Design Workshop on its run in Portugal. Under the coordination of Oficinas do Convento, the whole network-team gathered in Montemor-o-Novo for three days to share experiences on technical and logistical aspects related to our training project, to organise the upcoming workshops and to develop future perspectives on our way of understanding sustainable architecture.

The first week of Design and Build with CEB workshop in Portugal has passed with the achieved goal: the foundation is finished!

19 participants from 7 different countries engaged in the challenge of building a prototype that can host 2 residents/volunteers in our Oficinas da Cerâmica e da Terra.

On Thursday, 13th of April, LearnBIØN Workshop #2 (Build and Design with wattle-and-daub and light straw) has officially been lanced in Casaprota, central Italy. AK0-chairman Arch. Stefan Pollak met Marcello Ratini, mayor of Casaprota and Arch. Renato Vivaldi Tesser, chairman of SabinArti, the local partner organisation, for the project start.

Another week has passed at the Design and Build with CEB course in Portugal. It was the time to take out the foundation’s formwork and see the result of the previous week of work. It seamed like a desirable pool, that was quickly filled with gravel. A layer of juta fabric and a regularization bastard mortar (cement and lime) helped prepare the surface for the upcoming masonry. Studying the masonry bound-pattern according to the building new dimensions was the next step.

Saturday 18th of February the AK0-team together with a group of volunteers have started to harvest the canes needed for the raw-earth walls they are planning to build in next July. The canes have been sourced on a private estate in the hilly Sabina region, 60km north-east from Rome and only some hundred metres from the future building site in the town of Casaprota that will host the workshop.

Here, in Montemor-o-Novo, it was an intense weekend. We received our 3 volunteers to start producing Compressed Earth Blocks stabilized or not, with different mixes. We worked with 7 different recipes, mixing clay, small stones, Natural Hydraulic Lime, ashes and cement.

We start in Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal with our first 4 week workshop, running from 20th april- 20th may. The course teach how to design and build with Compressed Earth Bricks. A great oppertunity to learn from professionals in vernacular building techniques. Join Oficinas do Convento in this great spatial exploration in a practical build workshop.

Our whole team gathered in Brussels for our first training course. HE2B had prepared an interesting program for us, including both group discussions and site visits with a chance to engage with different stakeholders.