On the 28th of august the travelling exhibition opens in Stockholm. The doors open at 17 with presentations starting at 18.30 by AES. The project results from the 3 year collaboration will be presented and discussed through the topic of placemaking, co-creation and resources.

We are at Milan Design Week! The exhibition covers the BIØN activities from 2015-2018, including the preview of our guides, that will be available for download soon.

It is integrated at Terra Migaki Design 2019 in the Studio Museo Francesco Messina, from 9th until the 14th of April. The opening event will be the 10th April from 10:00 to 18:00.

We are in the center of European Union!

Our exhibition opened in Bruxelles at the building of HE2B – Defrè on the 15th February. It is open to the public until the 5th April, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 62 Avenue Defrè.

Here are some pictures of the arrival and implementation of the exhibition material! It is incredible to see this materials changing rooms place after place and getting a new identity. Don’t loose the opportunity to visit it!

After the first exhibition in Montemor-o-Novo, it follows to Caceres at Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores e Architectos Tecnicos de Caceres from November 7th till the 23rd.

It all started with a preview at Lavadouros on the 18th August and the official exhibition at the Montemor-o-Novo Municipal Gallery, happening from September 8th until October 3rd.

Last weekend the first cycle of LearnBIØN, the training program conceived by seven European partner organisations which included six practical workshops, has been concluded.

The 6th International Degrowth Conference in Malmö, Sweden, titled “Dialogues in turbulent times” has taken place from August 21-25. It was organized by the Institute for degrowth studies. We took the opportunity to present our work and share our insights from placemaking and place-led development.

Since last Monday all the BIØN partners are gathering again in Montemor-o-Novo for the final event of LearnBIØN. For one week most of the building techniques applied during the workshops held by the network during the last two years have been reproposed in a concentrated workshop with participants from all over Europe.

The purpose of this guide is to enable anyone interested in self-construction to prepare for a future project: as an organizer, participant, beneficiary, neighbour, or decision-maker, in full awareness that material and humans play here in constant interaction. For this in each part, we will find a list of tools to best support these factors in the daily workshops. This guide was the specific task of the HE2B team (Haute Ecole Bruxelles Brabant) and its CÉRISÈS laboratory within the LearnBi0n partnership.

Design and Build with Ø km (local and recycled materials), a 4 week building workshop in Milan, Italy. During this workshop we built with recycled materials and low tech building methods to suit the needs of the Casa Chiaravalle community.

During this workshop we built a small rammed earth library to suit the needs of the local community in Valverde de Burguillos, a small village located in Extremadura, Spain

Design and Build with Canes, a 4 week building workshop in Colleserola Natural Park , Spain. During this workshop we built an external covered space of 30 sqm to be used for cultural meetings and for theoretic classes during CanyaViva’s courses cane construction.

Design and Build with Cordwood, a 4 week building workshop in Östertälje, Sweden. During this workshop we built a cordwood building to suit the needs of the newly established social enterprise Eko-Odlarna. They cultivate organic produce on a small plot of land on the outskirts of Östertälje.

Design and Build with Wattle-and-Daub and Light Earth, a four weeks workshop in Casaprota, a town of 740 inhabitants in the inner Sabina region, Italy. During the workshop we colonized an abandoned concrete-skeleton using natural building techniques and aiming at revitalising it as a venue for community gatherings and small events.

Design and Build with Compressed Earth Blocks, a 4 week building course, in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. During the workshop we built a prototype for artists in residence at Oficinas da Cerâmica e da Terra, a research department from Oficinas do Convento ONG.

The techniques that will be the main vehicle for this workshop will be defined along with the design to be co-created by all the participants in the beginning of the week.

We will concentrate on some of the techniques shared abroad during the LearnBIØN program, so skills can be more easily shared with ones getting in contact with them for the first time and improved by the ones who have experienced them.

After workshop BI0N#5, we finished the construction: a rammed earth parapet was built, the wooden structure of the roof was set and the different layers of the green roof were installed. In the interior, a lime concrete slab was done on a rocks bed. The shelves were realized with ceramic tiles (made in a local small factory) and a lime plaster was done to protect each one of the niches.