There is still time until April 16th to enrol in the Master Circular Architecture: Shapes and Methodologies. One of the 3 workshops within this Master course will be held by BIØN-partner ARCò.

Building Beyond Borders is a cross-border learning platform and a postgraduate programme founded at the University of Hasselt in Belgium. Its promoters regularly host conferences and gatherings on bioclimatic design and local building materials; issues that are crucial also for our network.

It is great to see the structures after 2-4 years, how they aged and how the materials received their natural patina, the colors have shifted and the structure has its own unique character. We are currently doing a follow-up on our experimental buildings from Bi0n I, revisiting the structure and evaluating the work from the technical-, social- and learning approach.

We now have over 4700 downloads of our work! The guides are made available online to share knowledge and hopefully inspire more communities to take on bio-constructions.

Because of the current unpredictable future, we advise you to follow our calendar and the updates as the situation changes quickly. We hope to run all planned events and workshops, but the times may be altered due to the situation.

The Bi0n network can announce that we now have a new website full of material for you to enjoy! Don’t miss out on our future information, workshops, events, sign up to our newsletter to find out the latest from our network.

Governance and Finances -The network gathered for another week's training session to improve our skill sets and develop a better understanding of our future possibilities.

At a second level, this social dimension of the working group was reflected on the social dimension the projects brought to the local communities. Here factors such as hospitality, curiosity, helpfulness progressively contributed to overcome feelings of scepticism or even refuse. In those workshops were representatives of the beneficiary community were involved as trainees this dimension was particularly strong.

Placemaking is enabling and empowering people to create and participate in making places that they love and feel connected to.

– CoDesign Studio

The above description is borrowed from CoDesign studio. The work produced within this network is very much about placemaking, and finding alternative development paths. In this staff training session all partners focus on their own process and how to strengthen the placemaking strategies for each association.

– It helps having a building like this, one of the farmers add, it appeals to people interested in organic produce, and those are the ones we sell to.

This fourth and last week of Workshop BIØN² #1 Design&Build with Straw Bales was full of intense work, in order to be able to open the “Casita de Paja” to the local community on saturday.

This third week of workshop started with a key step: placing the cork insulated core slabs to build the roof of the “Casita de Paja”. With the help of a crane truck, we first put a 6m long ridge beam on which we installed and screwed one by one the prefabricated elements.

With the great help of the local community to move the prefab elements to the building site (one of the advantages of a rural areas is that “almost everybody” has a tractor!), we could start this week to place the straw panels onsite in order to build the walls of “La Casita de Paja”.

After several weeks of intense preparation work and uncertainty due to the Covid-19 crisis, we are finally pleased to announce that Workshop BIØN² #1 Design&Build with Straw Bales has started! Our 18 participants coming from 5 different countries (Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Belgium) just arrived in the small and nice village of Villasbuenas de Gata (Cáceres, Spain), that will host the workshop from 3 to 30 august 2020.

Organized by miga – ACTYVA, from August 3rd until August 30th 2020, the workshop Design and Build with Straw Bales (prefabricated panels) will take place in the north of Extremadura (Spain) in Villasbuenas de Gata, a small village located in a privileged environment of mediterranean forest and rivers.

After the successful project Bi0n I, we continue the development, launching Bi0n II. We share the same focus: bio-construction, life long learning and community driven development.

Our first session was to further develop skills within the network. The training session was held by Sciences PO in Grenoble and focused on skill sets connected to the cooperative. The principals of a cooperative, identifying our resources and assets.

We are glad to announce that the new Learn BIØN² project has been approved by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

We are looking forward for the new challenges and to spread Building Impact Zero Techniques with a high social impact across several countries in different events.

The Portuguese ERASMUS+ National Agency awarded the ERASMUS+ 2019 Good Practices Prize for Adult Education in Strategic Partnerships to Oficinas do Convento as coordinator of the LearnBIØN project.

The development of the network created a positive impact on each organization. The adult learners gained experience and skills on building impact zero materials and techniques. At the same time the project had a great positive impact on the local communities, with the implementation of small prototype infrastructures that guaranteed the highlight of low impact building materials (a summer library, an organic food shop, a gather space at a refugee hosting shelter, a community flexible space, an outdoor stage and a artists’ temporary residence).

The history of our cities have been always characterized by phenomenon of transformation. Architecture is a system open to mutations, capable of “recycling” its own purpose, its own shape and its own meaning. “Examples like Spalato, like Teatro di Marcello in Rome and the Il Duomo di Siracusa, to mention three of the clearest examples, are reborn from recycling. It is not treated as restoration: the idea of conservation tends to embalm the image of the architectural or urban space giving value to the immutable. Instead the process of recycling, the change is the value, especially when it is able to generate successes as in the examples mentioned before.1” (M. Ricci 2011).

We are celebrating our last gathering in Portugal and the last stop of our Traveling Exhibition in Stockholm. To mark this day we release the guides produced during the three years LearnBIØN project. The guides are eight and divided by topics and techniques: