Sustainable Design in Practice

Training course on permaculture and natural building

Build, design, learn: youth workers from eight countries explored permaculture as a design system and built three natural buildings on the farm.

Perché

The most powerful way to learn ecological design is to do it: on a real site, with real constraints, alongside people from different countries.

Quello che è successo

• Permaculture as design: ethics and principles, zoning, bioclimatic design and energy flows.
• Water and soil: swales, rainwater harvesting and composting toilets; soil, plants and plant guilds.
• Natural building: timber frames, natural insulation, lime and earth plaster, prepared in morning sessions and practised on site every afternoon.
• Simple and waste-free: only three sizes of timber and three types of screw, a cutting plan to use every plank in full, and insulation from local hay and around 100 old pillows from a local farm.
• A design for the farm: a permaculture layout for one of La Buona Terra’s spaces, presented and discussed together.

Risultati

• Three natural buildings built by the group on the farm. They work as dry toilets in summer and as storage for mattresses and tents in winter.
• Practical building skills, and methods youth workers can repeat with young people at home.
• Average overall satisfaction: 4.85 out of 5 (13 responses).

“I truly saw the importance of practical activities with a clear and material objective, in this case building three dry toilets, to increase team building, interaction and exchange.” (a Sustainable Design in Practice participant)

“My most valuable take-away: what permaculture is and how we can apply it to our lives even if we don’t live in the countryside or have a farm.” (a Sustainable Design in Practice participant)

See also the Carousel of Techniques (PDF), made by the participants of Make Your Voices Heard about this building site. Concesso in licenza secondo CC BY-SA 4.0. © Associazione di Promozione Sociale Kora e partner del progetto.