[GSBN] Earth Building UK to Act as Repository for Global Research/Standards

Thu Nov 13 16:12:01 UTC 2014

Feile,

I second Bruce the EBNnet has the most complete resource available.

Other sources I know about are Craterre in Grenoble. The Kassel university 'Leem' research center home base of Gernot Minke.

Besides that you should be aware of the Leonardo project. 

Rene Dalmeijer Proces Advies
Thomas Hoodstraat 2
1086 WE Amsterdam

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On Aug 26, 2014, at 02:06, Paul Jaquin wrote:

> Hi Feile, Dan (and everyone else!)
> 
> I would check out Celia Macedo's pages which I had a little bit of input into - there are a lot of undergraduate and postgradute theses stored there. I think Celia has finished now, so I don't know if this is being updated much more.
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/researchterra/research
> 
> I would also add a note of caution - having reviewed a lot of the earth building codes, there are some which are definitely rehashes of older ones, and there isn't a definite mine of information out there, just waiting to be found. 
> 
> But it would certainly be good to have all the information in the same place!
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Paul
> (recently moved to Warkworth, New Zealand!)
> -- 
> Paul Jaquin
> 
> www.historicrammedearth.com
> @pauljaquin 
> 
> 
> On 26 August 2014 10:40, Bruce EBNet <bruce at ecobuildnetwork.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi, Everyone and especially Feile —
> 
> Feile asked about my summary of earthen building standards around the world, now 8 years old.  It can be found and downloaded here.
> 
> “Here” being the BuildWell Library of Natural Building, slowly started a year ago and now building content.  We are ever working to improve it— a user-generated and reviewed collection of research, field reports, relevant websites, etc. pertaining to natural building both in rural and urban contexts.
> 
> Please use it, please add to it.  Feile, I urge EBUK to not replicate the effort — the whole idea is to develop a single worldwide repository for finding and building knowledge of natural building, especially earth and straw.  If we go on developing our own regional or personal collections, then we will continue to make it hard for anyone searching for specific knowledge.
> 
> Anybody can contribute anything they want to our collective knowledge base — in fact, we’re counting on it.  We (that is, EBNet who hosts the Library), only make a cursory check to make sure junk advertising didn’t get posted.  Otherwise, we leave it to you, the users, to rate and vet which items may or may not be valuable.  Any language or nationality is fine, just make sure the author of anything you contribute is OK with putting it in the pubic domain.
> 
> There are already hundreds, if not thousands, of useful documents and links that should be in the Library.  I haven’t even finished uploading everything I have buried on my hard drive.  But imagine if all that cool stuff, and stuff yet to come, were in one well-known place.  You could have academic courses built around it.  You could have gamers making cool apps, like giving schoolchildren the assignment to use it to design the lowest carbon house they can using only materials from within a quarter mile.
> 
> You could make it easy to build naturally.  
> 
> Please check it out, please send feedback if you have any.  I will be giving a keynote address at the NOCMAT conference in Sao Paulo in November, where there will be great research presented from every continent, and I will invite all the attendees to also use and add to the Library.  It really seems to me like the next thing we need.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Bruce King
> www.ecobuildnetwork.org
> (415) 987-7271
> Skype: brucekingokok
> Twitter: @brucekinggreen 
> http://bruce-king.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 25, 2014, at 5:11 AM, Feile Butler <feile at mudandwood.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi All
>>  
>> A while back some of us were trying to establish earth-based expertise and what standards, etc. were out there. I am now trying to move this idea along to something more cohesive.
>>  
>> Earth Building UK (EBUK) is coming up to 5 years old and we have a new chair, Dan Maskell, who is very eager to get EBUK more active. I came on board as a director this Spring. We have divided ourselves up into sub-groups and I am leading the New-Build Sub-Group, but am also active in Knowledge, Skills and Education.
>>  
>> Under New-Build we have a roadmap which will probably take a long time to fully realise - but this is the plan:
>> 	• Identify all of the existing standards and codes relating to earth building (a lot of work seems to have happened here already and I have contacted Bruce King, Martin Hammer, Jeff Ruppert, Andy Horn and Tara Shammer directly in this regard, thanks to their contributions or their being mentioned last time around).
>> 	• Identify the universities, colleges, associations and research centres that are actively or interested in undertaking research in earth as a construction material.
>> 	• Compile a comprehesive library of all research undertaken on earth in the research centres. This will probably never be fully achieved or it will take years to achieve it, but we have to start somewhere. I am so conscious that there has been so much excellent research carried out but if you haven't attended a specific conference, you will never hear about it and it could be exactly the information you are looking for.
>> 	• Survey the building control officers to find out what are their concerns about using earth as a contemporary building material (this will only happen in the UK and Ireland to begin with - but there is nothing to stop other associations carrying this out at local level),
>> 	• Identify the gaps in our knowledge that are obstructing the construction of contemporary earth buildings.
>> 	• Contact the universities, colleges and research centres with a list of research projects that will directly benefit the earth building community by filling in those gaps.
>> 	• Develop a training programme for building control officers disseminating the most up-to-date information available. Again, this will be geared towards the UK and Ireland, but the programme could be used as a template for other countries, to be adpated as necessary.
>> At the moment, it is all voluntary - so a huge task to be undertaken in our spare time. However, we are putting a few different fund raising strategies together, so hope to be able to dedicate some (decent?) funds to the task in the future.
>>  
>> So - at the moment I am at Step 1 - Identifying all of the existing standards and codes, Step 2 - Identifying the relevant universities, colleges, associations and research centres and Step 3 - Compiling a library of earth-based research papers. If you can provide any guidance on any of these steps, I would be very grateful.
>>  
>> As I said, even though it may take years to achieve, if we can create some kind of logical, catalogued repository for all things technical in relation to earth building, it would be an amazing resource and really benefit the whole earth buildng community in our effort to promote earth construction now and in the future.
>>  
>> Please forward this to anyone who you think may be able to help.
>>  
>> Kind Regards
>>  
>>  
>> Féile Butler
>> MRIAI B.Arch Dip. Arch Conservation Grade III
>> Accredited PSDP, Assigned Certifier
>> Co-Director of Earth Buidling UK
>> Mud and Wood
>> Grange Beg, Skreen, Co. Sligo, Ireland
>> T:  +353 (0) 71 930 0488
>> M: +353 (0) 86 806 8382
>> E : feile at mudandwood.com
>> W: www.mudandwood.com
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