Placing the straw panels onsite
BIØN²#1 Second week of the workshop
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”. Each module has been screwed on a wooden scale making the connexion with the basement and acting as a beam. The modules were then screwed with the next one, creating a strong structure. After placing the second row of straw panels, a second wooden ring beam was placed, and finally, the triangular modules were positioned, forming the slope to fit with the future roof.
While some participants were in charge of building the walls by placing and screwing the modules, other were making other tasks like stapling wooden fiber board on the wooden structure of the panels to prepare the plastering surface, of cleaning old tiles that we are recycling for the covering of the roof and north façade of the building.
Some of them were also recruited to be actors of the didactic videos that the video makers from Oficinas do Convento are currently shooting on our workshop in order to further disseminate the results of the project.
As last week, the practical training onsite was also completed by several theoretical inputs on the afternoon, on the following topics: vernacular and contemporary natural fiber architecture and straw bale building techniques (Nebraska vs Prefab). Enjoying the visit of our Portuguese partner, we organised a small peer-lecture session on the evening, about the work of cru arquitectura e investigação.
We finished the week by an evaluation of the training process through the “6 hat of de Bonno” methodology, which provided to the group interesting information on how everybody is experiencing the workshop.
Another key moment was the first guided visit to the building site that we proposed to anyone interested in knowing more about the project, and was a real success!
