Building with earthbags at Casa Chiaravalle

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. Someone said that sweating together can create deeper connection, and we became one great team. All the participants had the chance to learn every step of the process, becoming ready to lead it in the next future. The bags have grown fast in numbers of lines and in quality of realization. We have been so good and fast that we built an extra bench on one corner of the room. We had the needs to talk about the soil and its composition. This was a very fast, but essential talk about the technique of recognizing the composition and the best to use it. At the end we reused, moved and pressed more than 15 cubic meters of earth.