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.

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.