Rattan furniture

I came across this article while browsing around for inspiring outdoor furniture pieces. With our trip to the bamboo furniture factory coming up, I thought I'd share these images with you.

Bike-powered Latrine Pumps!

Sanitation in the developing countries is still being developed to be more efficient and more dignifying for the latrine emptiers. MIT graduate student and his team Sanergy just field-tested a bike-powered latrine pump in Kenya.

See: Engineering for Change for the article and Sanergy's website for how they built prototypes of latrines as well.

Architecturally the concept of sustainability “green architecture” has been flouting for a while by using recycled materials and energy efficient products. However I think the concept of recycling materials is not that sustainable. There is a lot of wasted energy in the process of recycling the materials. A hero of sustainable architecture is Michael Reynolds who has found a way to work with raw garbage; he describes his designs by using non-reprocessed materials. He argues that there is a lot of wasted energy that goes into the recycling process. In fact he started his movement before the oil crisis. In 1971 he built his first house from recycled materials. The structures built under his direction utilize everyday trash items like aluminum cans and plastic bottles. Instead of using conventional (and energy-consuming) recycling methods. Reynolds takes the redundant item and uses it as is. His Thumb House built in 1972, used beer cans wired together into "bricks," which were mortared together and then plastered over. Reynolds interest in sustainable architecture has increased as global warming started to occur. I think that Reynolds has successfully managed to find a way to cover three main categories of sustainability the ecological, social and economic contexts. In his recent project “Earthships” ecologically he is using material local to the entire planet as well as recycled materials wherever possible. The houses would rely on natural energy sources and be independent from the “grid”. Socially A family of four could totally survive here without having to go to the store, which will force the family to spend more time together working on farming. Economically it would be practical for the average person with no specialized construction skills to be able to create an Earthship. In the housing project “Earthship” Reynolds describes his walls as walls that have a high resistive value where he uses tires as thermal mass, he fill the tires with dirt and stack them above and against each other to create. 

In his In documentary movie "Garbage Warrior," Reynolds describes one of his new homes, called the Phoenix: "There's nothing coming into this house, no power lines, no gas lines, no sewage lines coming out, no water lines coming in, no energy being used ... We're sitting on 6,000 gallons of water, growing food, sewage internalized, 70 degrees year-round ... What these kind of houses are doing is taking every aspect of your life and putting it into your own hands ...” that is so true, living in an Earthship is a complete life cycle rain water is collected for drinking and bathing where the bathing water goes into the toilet and the flushed water goes in planning. There fore is no waste. Reynolds work by looking at the bigger scale, he considers all aspects and think of the impact of materials on the long run. Unlike Solar decathlon where it is more about wining the prize and promoting for schools. Reynolds has successfully managed to influence other countries and nations to take an act towards global worming. In 2004 he built an Earthship in United Kingdom and South Africa. 

Info of some local resources

Sisal Stems

Before dying the sisal plant will, at 7 to 12 years of age, shoot a pole to carry the flowers. The pole may reach a height of 6m or more and has a fibrous circumference, which makes it tough, but the inner parts are quite soft. Sisal poles have limited structural strength and durability, but are sometimes used for wall cladding in semi-open structures, such as maize cribs. The poles can be split and are joined in the same way as bamboo.

Sisal Fibre

Sisal fibre is one of the strongest natural fibres. It has traditionally been used as a reinforcement in gypsum plaster sheets. Sisal fibres have the ability to withstand degradation due to bacteriological attack better than other organic fibres, but are attacked by the alkalinity of cement. However, research has been carried out to make sisal fibre, like other natural fibre composites, a reliable cement reinforcement for long term use in exposed situations. See Section Fibre Reinforced Concrete.

Coir Waste

Coir is the by-product of coconuts. The husk is used for making coir mats, cushions and as fuel. It can be mixed with cement, glue or resins either to produce low density boards having good insulating and sound absorption properties, or be compressed to make building boards. It is also used as reinforcement in cement for making roofing sheets.

Elephant Grass

dry toilet

Sisal Concrete

Haiti’s Scars, and Its Soul, Find Healing on Walls by Damien Cave

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

February 22, 2011

Haiti’s Scars, and Its Soul, Find Healing on Walls

By DAMIEN CAVE

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Colorful and sad, beautiful but cracked, the three remaining murals of the Episcopal Trinity Cathedral received the soft afternoon sun after last year’s earthquake only because the rest of the church had collapsed.

Haitians walking by looked heartbroken. All 14 murals had been internationally treasured. Painted in the early 1950s during an artistic renaissance here, they depicted biblical scenes from a proud, local point of view: with Jesus carrying a Haitian flag as he ascended to heaven; and a last supper that, unlike some famous depictions, does not portray Judas with darker skin than the other disciples.

“All of this was painted from a Haitian perspective,” said the Rev. David César, the church’s main priest and its music school director. He marveled at the image miraculously still standing: Judas, with the white beard and wavy white hair often assigned to God himself.

It was his favorite mural, he said, and now, it is being saved.

In a partnership between the Episcopal Church and the Smithsonian, all three surviving murals are being stabilized and carefully taken to a climate-controlled warehouse in Haiti where they will be protected until they can be redisplayed in a new home.

The painstaking 18-month project began in the fall, with conservators analyzing how the paintings were bound to the walls (weak mortar) and the materials that were used to paint them (egg tempera). It was clear that they were fragile. A portion of one painting near the former altar faded to abstraction during the rainy season.

The other collapsed murals seemed to disappear. Perhaps portions were pulverized by the earthquake; perhaps some were stolen. But when conservators and Haitian art students separated the fragments from the rubble, they found only tiny pieces, usually the size of a hand or smaller, that could not be reassembled.

“We have only about 10 percent of the 11 murals that fell,” said Stephanie Hornbeck, the chief conservator with the Smithsonian, whose master’s degree focused on Haitian art. “When you have that little left, there’s nothing you can do.”

For the murals still standing, she said experts had higher hopes and immediate plans. For the past several weeks, Haitian workers in what was once the sanctuary have been carefully constructing scaffolding. A web of wooden beams now holds up tin and vinyl to protect the paintings, supporting both the art and the workers trying to carefully chisel it away.

Simply hearing hammers and seeing scaffolding — what smiles they bring here in a city where reconstruction is practically non-existent. No less soothing is the classical music — the high wail of trumpets, the smooth pull of violins — that frequently comes from behind the church, where Mr. César teaches outside. He is one of the many in Haiti who learned his first bars of music at the church’s music school. “My whole identity is here,” he said, and on this campus at least, reconstruction means more than architecture: a full artistic life is also being rebuilt.

The effort to save the murals is a visible extension of a little-known cross-border bond. The Episcopal Church of Haiti was founded by an African-American named James Theodore Holly, who led about 2,000 black Americans to Haiti in 1861 as part of a wider emigration movement. He and his sons played prominent roles as professionals and scholars after founding “what was actually Haiti’s first national church, and the first Episcopal church founded outside of the Anglophone world,” said Laurent Dubois, a historian at Duke University.

The eight muralists, while Haitian from their toes to the tips of their paintbrushes, also had American ties. Many trained at an academy founded by an American artist, DeWitt Peters, who came to Haiti in 1943.

Credit for the work, though, must also be shared by the Haitian bishops and priests who “gave them the liberty they needed,” said Mr. César. Some of the unconventional images would later become controversial for Christians who saw links to voodoo, but for many Haitians and art historians, they represented one of this country’s proudest cultural moments.

The earthquake ruined much of that. Only The Last Supper, Native Procession and The Baptism of Christ survived — and each work bears the wounds of the vicious tremor that killed 300,000 people. The paintings’ winding cracks, running through legs, through torsos, and through the neck of a dark-skinned woman in the baptism scene who seems to be screaming, are violent and painful.

Ms. Hornbeck said that conservators and the church are still discussing which damaged elements must be fixed.

But Mr. César, standing near the church’s former entrance, said he had little doubt about whether the paintings would be fully restored, or left how they appeared after the quake. He said that instead of rebuilding the church, religious leaders are planning to create a garden for the murals, in which they can reside in nature, earthquake scars and all. He said it was the only way to remember, the only way to move on.

“We have to live with it,” he said, staring at the roofless sanctuary and piles of rubble. “We have to learn how to live with it.”

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Here is a google earth map of our site and APPROXIMATE dimensions.

About Us

Material studies

Hi every body!

this are some pictures of my material studies.

Im working with cardboard paper tubes and assembling them in different ways bamboo could be assembled.

Claudia