Guide – Design and Build with Rammed Earth

Design and Build with Rammed Earth

15th April- 29th April 2018

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.

Rammed earth is a building technique based on an abundant resource located under our feet: soil. Carefully chosen and mixed with the right amount of water, it is compressed with a rammer into a formwork which in then removed in order to let the wall dry and reach its final resistance. Rammed earth has excellent characteristics as a building material (thermal properties, indoor air regulation, low-environment impact, etc), it makes sense to bring it up to date here in our region, as it is being done in other places since several decades.

In this workshop we investigated suitable ways of building with rammed earth, how to process the raw materials on site and how to design a rammed building able to last in time and meet current comfort and security standards. With 16 participants of 9 different countries, we built a 20m2 book storage place and a reading area in the park of the pool of the village. that will be inaugurated this summer.

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