Developing the Design

While some of you have been getting your plane tickets and applying for visa's, RAUMGESCHICHTEN has been corresponding with experts in the field to further develop our original design and to optimize it for climatic, structural and practical constraints.  We only have four weeks to construct the building, and we're there to learn as well as build (and hopefully have some fun as well), so we've decided to downsize the design in order to have a functional building at the end of the workshop. The good news is we've received a large amount of applicants from 8 different countries, so we'll have plenty of people on hand to complete the project!

We're still using a combination of earthen techniques - rammed earth and adobe brick - for the exterior walls, which remains to be the focus of the workshop. The house will consist of two rooms, a living room and a sleeping room, with the possibility for a bathroom to be added on at a later date (another workshop?). We've also redesigned the roof to make better use of the climate and to increase air flow in the house with the use of the solar chimney effect.

The position of the house will be determined on arrival at the site. Markus and Matthias will arrive a few days before the workshop begins to look at possible sites available in the Abetenim Art Village and determine the best location for our design. Based on the altitude of the sun, the building orientation should be east/west - to have the shorter walls facing lower sun radiation. This means the rammed earth walls would be located north/south, with the larger rammed earth wall on the north side, so that it avoids the south sun and can be used as a cooling mass for the building (thermal component activation).

I'll be writing more about the details of the design as we create them. Here's some images of what the house is starting to look like: 

View from the south east

View from the east

View from the south