Earth Build Europe 2021, Friday 7th May.

09:00 CONVERSATION 1: How do we grow our earth building network?

Opening remarks with your host Rowland Keable, EBUKI.

About the host...

Rowland works with rammed earth as a material in a wide range of situations. This includes consulting, bringing the technical knowledge of the material to a design team in a new build context. Rowland also provides technical liaison, working with commercial and academic testing facilities in the context of live projects and research work. Teaching mainly to academic students and small workshops. Training particularly on-site in a commercial setting. Regulatory work, writing, developing and harmonising national standards.

When our vernacular heritage was built, material choices were drawn exclusively from a pool of natural materials put together by highly skilled, lifelong artisans. Contemporary building is standardised with much of the knowledge placed in the hands of the material manufacturers. I believe if earthen and other natural building models are to thrive, the natural building ‘community’ must cooperate to become an ‘industry’ by re-establishing its vernacular heritage using contemporary knowledge networks.

I am going to talk about who I am to answer that question, about the net and the work that it takes to have one, about where we stand today depending on where we are looking from. I'm going to ask everyone else to start answering the question. There are many possible answers, and they depend upon our compass and our choices: I am going to talk about the engine-nearing option(s) and the warm data option(s), and about the part(s) that we cannot foresee. Earth Build Europe is a prompt, not a past tense, come and build with us.

Many alliances between European organisations have existed since 2008, especially in preparing European ECVET Training. Since 2015 the European Straw Building Association (ESBA) has tried to focus their common forces on communication and dissemination, supported by the results of other European or Interreg projects like UP STRAW. Herbert talks here about the arduous path of joining forces and mediating between organisations, about setbacks and successes in dealing with individualists, as can be found not only in Europe's green parties but also in the committed non-profit organisations in the field of sustainable building.

Earth building networks exist around the world well before Earth Build Europe (EBE) came to life. Let us find out what is similar and what different, let us learn from each other. Different socio-cultural backgrounds trigger different ways of turning ideas into facts, throughout the years and in spite of global challenges.

11:40 CONVERSATION 2: Climate Crisis - is our response enough?

Opening remarks with your host Louise Halestrap, EBUKI & CAT.

The built environment is responsible around 40% of global greenhouse emissions and consuming around 40% of all raw materials. This is simply not sustainable. Alternatives to current practices are urgently needed. This presentation will explore the role can earth building materials play in reducing the wider impact of construction. The presentation draws on nearly 30 years experience working with earth construction materials.

LCA/EPD are methods to quantify inputs (energy consumption) and outputs (CO2 emissions) of a production system on the base of standardized procedures. Using these instruments, a quantification and objective comparison of inputs / outputs in earth material production with other mineral building products is possible. The EPD system enables a more precise definition of production processes of earth building materials. On this base, EPD can contribute to a reduction of CO2 emissions.

The inherently low environmental footprint of clay-earth products is often superior to that of the carbon-tech products available on the market. Other mineral-based building materials may have greater application potential than clay-earth but these products have a high environmental cost. The production methods require many more resources, or a great deal of heat and energy is expelled in building with these products. They are therefore in many cases "environmentally oversized". Earthen-clay products, on the other hand, are proportionally much better suited. The low energy cost necessary for their production and processing, as well as their reusability, contribute to this. This lecture will give a short overview of the clay-earth products and systems offered by the company CLAYTEC which is used extensively in German earthen-clay building.

14:05 CONVERSATION 3: How is the culture of earth building evolving?

Opening remarks with your host Tom Morton, EBUKI.

In recent decades, clay architecture has seen a strong evolution. Yet the industrial design sector is still embryonic. Terra Migaki Design has brought together professionals from different disciplines to develop this area through specific research, international competitions, workshops and exhibitions. The use of 3D printers with clay mixes, the development of technologies and compounds, the use of "Industrial Clay", the enhancement of earth's performance in particular products and, finally, the use of clay in countless areas of experimentation. These experiences show how the world of designers and clay experts needs greater synergies. For this reason, the transmission of skills at an international and interdisciplinary level plays an important role.

The role of Architects and Engineers in our construction culture – why do aesthetic matter and how does what architects think affect our built world. Can we shift values in design to deliver a better architectural culture? How to connect the design approach with other reasons for earth building like functional and ecological aspects?

Almost a century ago, in his novel A brave new world, writer and critic Aldous Huxley warned against blindly and religiously adopting modernist ways. A century later, life in the world is reaching a certain turning point – or probably a point of no return - facing a dystopia result of the western modernist thought regime of technical development and precision, quantification and organisation – but also rationality, mass production, extortion. In Huxley‘s novel, the protagonist meets a young man who is neither of the old times, nor of the new times. He has learned all he knows from two books, a scientific manual and the works of Shakespeare, reflecting what is probably a common feeling of many, on one hand there are catalogues and excel sheets minutely describing the details of everything, to the point that it has no meaning anymore, and on the other we have a somewhat romantic and (over-) dramatized (dis-) connection to our outer and inner nature.

Methods have to be changed and returning to natural materials and artisanal methods might provide us with guidance towards a more sustainable future, to be sure. In this talk I will speculate on what the traditional Icelandic turf house might be able to teach us and thus contribute to our future ways of living in the world.

Creating with earth is all about relationships, with people and place, with the past and with nature. When we work with soil in our hands we become immersed in a sensory experience rooted in time and place, that also reminds us where we came from and where we will end up. Working together we can harness community and connection, empowerment and belonging. Responding to diverse local materials and climates, with wisdom and ingenuity, we recognise that earth is not a commodity or resource, but something we borrow and recycle, so that others, human or otherwise, may thrive in our presence and in our passing.