Apply to the next workshop- Design & Build with Straw Bales

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.

The workshop will be a 20% theoretical – 80% practical training of 4 weeks, during which we will build an entire building for the development of new activities of the local community. We will execute the walls with prefabricated wood and straw panels, previously built by ourselves in a shed. Once the panels assembled on site, we will build the wooden roof and plaster the walls with clay and lime renders.

The hands-on training on the building site will be complemented by theoretical sessions in which we will learn more in detail about the following topics:

– Building with straw: Straw as a building material: properties and selection. Different techniques for straw building. Focus on prefabricated panels techniques. Production line. Assembly. Design rules. Constructive details. Electricity and plumbing. Compatible partitions typs, flooring and roofing.

– Building with wood: Durability classes, constructive details. Basic dimensioning.

– Building with raw earth: Earth as a building material: properties and selection. Main building techniques. Focus on clay plasters. Formulation. Organic and inorganic stabilization.

– Lime plasters: Lime types. Formulation and implementation.

Parallell to the building site, several activities will be programmed: soil selection for clay plasters, rural-sketching, etc.