The first week has passed at the Design and Build with Rammed Earth course in Valverde de Burguillos (Extremadura, Spain). The whole group of participants (17 people from 9 diferent countries) gathered on sunday 15th and had their first contact with the local vernacular architecture through a “rural sketching” activity.

The participants to integrate the #5 course Design and Build with Rammed Earth started to arrive during Saturday. At dinner time the group was already filling an entire room of the only restaurant in the village.

Sunday morning it was time to start! Each partner presented himself and the work developed by his own organization, as well as the past/future courses inside of the LearnBIØN project.

Here we are, since Friday, at Casa de la Cultura de Valverde de Burguillos for another LearnBIØN meeting with all the partners. Meanwhile, participants for the Course #5 Design and Build with Rammed Earth, are arriving.

The last week of the course has arrived. We worked really hard to finish the structure. This week was the time of the secondary nerves that are a bit more sensible than the other elements. We remade all the knots that until now were provisional and that now are definitive.

During the third week of the Design and build with cane course in Valldaura we finally finished the foundation and so we were ready to hoist all the eight main arches!

Another week has passed at the Design and build with cane course in Valldaura. It was the time to prepare the foundation, Vitor and Jonathan worked hard to make four holed that we needed to put four huge wooden poles in which all the arches will be tied with ropes made from sisal.

The first week of Design and build with CANE course has passed! Eight people from Spain, Italy, France, Argentina and Portugal with the challenge of building a structure for theoretical classes of CanyaViva courses in the Natural Park of Collserola, in Valldaura, have arrived. Because of the place where we are building, the biggest challenge is to build only with natural materials.

Rammed earth is a traditional building technique present in many parts of Spain, especially in the south of Extremadura, where most of the villages are built with rammed earth and painted with lime. This beautiful vernacular architecture is today under threat of extinction in spite of the countless benefits of raw earth, a local and low transformed material with high comfort regulation properties.

Course postponed to March 4th to 31st 2018 due to bureaucratic issues. Design and Build with Cane is a 4 week building workshop. During the workshop we will build a cane building for a training center in natural building.

Last weekend AK0 together with a small team of volunteers and trainees got back to Casaprota where the association had build a small multipurpose building as the result of LearnBIØN workshop#2 during the month of July.

The educational building site inaugurated in Casaprota, Italy, to host last July’s LearnBIØN workshop #2 will be the location for further initiatives:

BIØN-partner AK0 is organizing RENDER01, a three-days workshop open to architects, building professionals or self-constructors who want to learn more about natural finishes for internal and external walls. The workshop will take place next November from Friday 10th till Sunday 12th

The last week of the workshop, and plenty of things were completed. We started and finished laying the cordwood floors, using the cut up oak. All the walls were completed, all with its own pattern.The eastern wall made up by the windows placed as a V, and walls filled by chopped birch wood and debarked oak logs. Above the windows we made the wall fillings by recycled wood

The third week started with making the first cordwood wall, starting with the southern facade. It was exciting to finally see some results from processing of the material. The roof was completed to the point of having a covered structure. The layers for planting will be done at a later stage.

The 2nd week started with a lecture by Cordwood DIY builder Olle Hagman, taking us through the history of cordwood building, the development of the technique and how it’s being used today. Olle also joined us on site with some valuable advice.

The first week of LearnBIØN course #3 Design and Build with Cordwood started on the 1st august with an introduction in Järna. The team was gathered with participants from 9 nationalities, all with unique skills that each one brings to the project.

On July 28th 2017 the BIØN-team leaded by AK0 with the help of the local partner association Sabinarti delivered the outcome of LearnBIØN workshop#2 to the local community of Casaprota, the small town in central Italy that has hosted the workshop.

LearnBIØN workshop#2 is getting in the final face. Since a few days the little training-prototype is being wrapped with a natural insulation layer. We decided for 80mm wood-fibre panels which we protect with a diffusive yet waterproof membrane. The panels are entirely made of wood and easy to cut on site.

Provar a Terra is an event that gathers people every year around the table, at Oficinas da Cerâmica e da Terra, Montemor-o-Novo. In this event there are several exhibitions about the works, courses and residences done during the last year.

Time is running in Casaprota! During the third week new members joined the team and their help was very useful to complete some key goals.

We finally got the insulation panels in wood fiber and the steam barrier; putting them on site was quite fast and after that we could install the last wall layer, a quincha panel covered with earth, sand and straw just on the external surface.

The LearnBIØN course #2 focused on lightweight constructions in earth building. While the first days were dedicated to explore an adjusted version of wattle-and-daub-techniques, in a second step the workshop-participants got the possibility to learn about lightweight, monolithic walls made of straw and raw earth.