The forth week, has been dedicated to close the opening with old windows that were ready to be demolished. We decided to recycle more than 60 square meters of windows to give the good transparency to the building and we worked on the visual connection through the inside and the outside.

To use national pinewood turned out to be more of a challenge than we first thought, as its quality is much lower than the expected and not at all in line with its price. Of course, the design of the doors, following the geometry of the inner arches and therefore with a quarter circle part, was already a big challenge for newbies!

The third week starts with a little changing of the participants, and few more mosquitos. The bottle walls had to be completed and each bottle had to be properly clean. It was a meditative job, which gave the expected result of a shining light through the glasses. The experience with the mortar mixture of the previous week was needed to use the good quality of mixture during the plastering. We used more than 5 tons of mixture for the wall and the plastering.

The second week stars with a little change of the participants, and a shining sun. We created the new wooden structure and the net support, we learn how to use some specific instrument of the site to mix the mortar and we started to prepare to wall to welcome the over 3.000 recycled bottles.

The first week starts with fresh and soft rain, giving the possibility to work without the hot weather conditions of this season. This lucky humidity, gave the best condition to use the local soil to fill the bags. The beginning of the workshop was a bit heavy and physical job, but we had a lot of talking breaks to go deeper in the earthbags technique to explore all the possible potential of this simple and efficient way of building.

We started already the first building phase with the earthbags technique. This was a great start to build the ludic center of CASA CHIARAVALLE. Great Team work!

Last July, during workshop #2 of the LearnBIØN-program, AK0 together with local associations and the municipality of Casaprota have equipped a training location for sustainable architecture within an abandoned building in central Italy.

As an integration to the library project developed by the local association Dehesa Tierra, AK0 was invited to work on the experimentation, which led to the construction of a small piece of fix furniture. The Rome based association partnered with Rossella Siani, adjunct professor in Parametric Design from the University of Naples, for this experience.

Second and last week of our ”design&build rammed earth workshop” have passed. During the week end we had the opportunity to know better the environment of the village with two excursions: first we were invited to a traditional walk in the country-side with Valverde’s inhabitants. During this pagan feast, they usually do a procession with horses, tractors and other vehicles, and make several breaks to have some wine and tapas. It was a great experience although we had to come back quickly to the village because of the rain..

Organized by ARCò, from June 4th until June 29th 2018, Design and Build with Økm (Local and Recycled Materials) in a real context, prototyping a 1:1 object for the development of new activities of the local community

Finally here we are.. the workshop #6 Design and Build with 0km (local and recycled materials) of the LearnBi0n network has its own location, Casa Chiaravalle in Milan.

The first inspection was carried out and we are ready to transform this garden into a physical space for comparison about sustainability and to create a space for new functions for the development of the local community that will host us.

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.