BUILD WITH WOOD AND EARTH * CONSTRUCTION WORKSHOP IN SCALE 1.1 Quinta das Relvas (Branca, Portugal)
The organization Relvas Farm, is located in Branca´s parish council (Albergaria-a-Velha Council). The Farm has a rich natural heritage where several flora and fauna species live. Here, our associates work daily to promote and develop non formal activities, focus on the artistic and eco-sustainable areas. Our main goal is to train and educate people for these topics (artistic and eco-sustainability), making them more active people spreading the message to their families, friends and local communities, changing a bit by bit communities to adopt more creative and healthier life styles. The organization has a multidisciplinary team, with elements working in fields like, event management, teaching, painting, architecture, meditation among others. All of them are extremely motivated to make this world a more fair and better place for us to live. One of our biggest projects here is to create an "artist residence", and that's the reason why we're organizing diferents construction workshops to create little houses in the forest of the farm to host all those artists the periods of creation. We experiment with natural and local mateterials, so we bring differents experts in each technique to allow participants to have the best training.
* WHAT? During one week ( 7 days of training/ 7 hours x day) we'll build one more house for the residence of artists using different construction techniques, as a load-bearing structure we will use wood as material, and the isolation filling will be done depending on the orientation of each wall of the "casinha",using earth and straw as main materials. Also the common facilities of the complex will be built, a series of dry toilets and showers, built with wooden structure and one more construction technique with earth to make the filling, in addition with this construction we will learn the basic operation of dry toilets and how a water purification system works. The techniques of construction with earth with which we will give isolation to the set will be light.straw.clay,"quincha", "bahareque" and "churrinhos" depending on the orientation we will have different needs and also allows us to experiment with different techniques. We provide you an image where you can see those diferent techniques, as the names are changing from language to language and land to land.
This workshop will be 10% theorical lessons that we'll concentrate the first day and 90% of practical aproach to the construction with natural materials. The most important part of the program is having this experience to 1.1 escale and make real a design of some ecological instalations with a colective work of one week time. In the theorical part we would like to make the participants an approach to the construction with earth around the world, the different techniques that exist, also wich one to choose according to the earth that we have available in the terrain and the demands of the climate and other conditioning factors in our region, and to facilitate a series of tests that can be make the earth of our terrain to know its composition and know if it is suitable to build.
* WHO? Jallalla colective, represented by Susana Tierra and Joana Colom, architects licensed in Spain and " constructors " working in different parts of the world. Already during their studies they specialized in sustainable architecture and since leaving university seven years ago they have been working on very interesting projects projects in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Central Europe, both in design and construction,always with natural and local materials, and thus gathering techniques and know-how -faires' from all around, that enriches their notion of "habitat".
* WHEN? This workshop will take place from Monday 6th of August to Sunday 12th of August, both days included in the training program. Students are advised to arrive on Sunday 5 to the place to spend the night already there.
* FOOD AND ACOMODATION We give different options depending on the price that each participant wants to pay. The full pack includes all the meals in the farm and acomodation in a common room with the rest of the participants with common areas and all the services of an independent house.
* HOW MUCH? €240 / Includes all training and lunch €270 / All training, all meals and acomodation in the camping site €300 / All training, all meals and acomodation in dormitory * WHERE?
Morada: Calçada das Relvas, Branca, Portugal
* CONTACT AND APLICATIONS Email: quinta.relvas@gmail.com Telefone: +351 914 861 266
* CALENDAR OF THE WORKSHOP (Susceptible to changes and adaptations on the last minute)