What is the Sustainable Construction Programme?

The sustainable construction programme is a student initiative at Oxford Brookes University which aims to raise awareness of sustainable construction as well as providing practical experience in sustainable building. Workshops involve hands-on tuition from sustainable construction experts for a small group of students and these are followed by an evening lecture to a wider audience.

Tuesday 18 March 2008

Bamboo workshop - what we made!


Plan and elevation - it's 6.5m in diameter and the legs are 2m long


A rather confusing isometric

Thursday 13 March 2008

Next Event

The workshop and lecture this week will be from Jack Everett
Bamboo construction: "no more straight lines"
www.jackeverett.co.uk

Wednesday 12 March 2008

Tuesday 11 March 2008

Strawbale Workshop Photos

















Strawbale Workshop

I've managed to get all the straw out my hair!! It was a fantastic day. We constructed 2 types of straw bale walls, timber frame infill and load bearing, all made on Chug's special trailer!

Wednesday 5 March 2008

Rammed earth books





Sustainable construction - next event!

This week's workshop and lecture will be straw bales led by Chug Tugsby and his website is www.strawbale-building.co.uk

The lecture is "Straw bales: buildings that don't cost the earth" at 6pm

See you there!

Tuesday 4 March 2008

Rammed earth pics

crushing the clay

sieving the clay

ramming

adding more earth

the second layer of formwork

adding more earth

the finished wall

after 3 days weathering - better than ever!

Monday 3 March 2008

Is anyone interested in building an ecohouse?

Is anyone interested in building an ecohouse in the university (if we can get permission). Seeing as half of the university is currently a building site this could be a possible proposal. The building could be used to hold further sustainable building workshops (good marketing for the university), lectures etc. The labour would be free and all volunteers would get a valuable experience to add to their CV's. I think it would be a good project to do over the summer, when other deadlines are finished. It could perhaps be done over a series of weekends. As Bob from the lime centre showed - with enough people and good organisation it is possible to do this in a short space of time. I know of a few people who would be interested in this already. If we could set up a list and a meeting for interested parties this might be possible..

Let me know what you think...Clare Nunneley