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A Way of Building: Using locally sourced materials

A Way of Building: Using locally sourced materials


Home » A Way of Building: Using locally sourced materials

Building using locally sourced materials can help to ensure your structure is low impact and ecologically sound.

This course provides hands-on experience in designing and building a structure from scratch, working with wood, stone, straw and other natural materials.

Key information

  • Duration: four days
  • Upcoming dates: Fri 26th – Mon 29th July 2024
  • Start and finish times: starts at 2pm and ends at 4pm on the last day.
  • Fees: £600 Shared accommodation. £660 for a Single room.
  • Includes: tuition, all materials, full board shared accommodation.
  • What to bring: as this is a highly practical course, safety boots are required
  • Terms and Conditions:

What you will learn

During this highly practical, hands-on course you will work with others to design and build a structure from the ground up, using locally sourced, found and low impact materials.

Through working on a real-life project, you will gain skills and experience in a wide range of natural materials, including timber, straw, stone and earth, and you’ll find out how to apply this knowledge in a range of scenarios so you can adapt what you have learned to your own projects.

Every structure built on this course is unique. Over the four days you will experiment with different designs and work together as a group to come up with a blueprint, basing your ideas on the available materials and adapting your plans as you gain more skills and knowledge.

Aimed at anyone with an interest in sustainable building, the course is particularly suited to architects and aspiring self-builders as it offers a hands-on experience of tools and materials.

The course also explores the culture of making, looking at the contribution this makes to effective change for transitional communities in situations of rapid change and scarce resources, particularly in informal urban settlements.

Meet your tutors

Your tutors for this course are Maurice Mitchell and Bo Tang.

Maurice teaches, researches and directs live projects in the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design (FASD) at London Metropolitan University where he runs a Diploma Studio. He has also taught at the Architectural Association, Oxford Brookes University and the Development Planning Unit, University College London.

Bo Tang studied architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), University of East London and London Metropolitan University. Since then Bo has been involved in wide array of interesting projects, including: research in the Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources (ARCSR), a research project in Sierra Leone that led to the construction of a new primary school, organising and curating ARCSR exhibitions and workshops, and was part of the RIBA Boyd Auger Scholarship 2008 research team, which explored art, urbanism and architecture in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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