Photo: Most Mira/ Adriana Keast
Most Mira Peace Centre Rammed Earth Prototyping Workshop
From 4-10th October 2017, in association with Most Mira and Lehm Ton Erde, we ran a 5 day on-site building residency producing rammed earth prototypes of details of the Most Mira Youth Centre Project. These prototypes are small scale experiments of details that we aim to use in the future centre, which can also be used as a playful landscape infrastructure; including a corner junction that is used as seating, a ring-beam and slab to be used as a small table, and a corner window that frames a view of a nearby school, which will all remain on the site.
A total of 9 students attended the workshop from the Faculties of Architecture at both the University of Sarajevo and the University of Banja Luka. In addition to two young Architects from the UK. The workshop was also visited by Young Architects from Sarajevo and Banja Luka, and professors from the Faculty in Banja Luka, who were intrigued to observe the workshop, some of whom stayed to help out with the building.
Continuing with the process of developing the project as a series of participatory Most Mira workshops, the residency helped built confidence and new skills in teamwork, communication and on-site making. Whilst also exposing participants to expert knowledge and teaching from Lehm Ton Erde, who performed a series of on-site demonstrations of each step of the rammed earth process, which we intend to turn into a video-manual for local tendering contractors.
Accompanying the workshop was a lecture by Martin Rauch in Banja Luka, which was sold out. This inspiring lecture was a journey through the projects of Lehm Ton Erde and their unique rammed earth building technology, which encouraged interesting discussions amongst local professors and practitioners, some of whom became inspired to visit us on site during the last few days of the workshop. The lecture was sponsored by Most Mira and the Association of Architects BiH.
The workshop, which is our biggest Most Mira workshop to date, was an exhilarating moment in the project, making permanent structures on the site which will act as scenography for future Most Mira theatre group performances, seating and informal space for the local community and permanent landscape features, whilst demonstrating the beauty and possibility of rammed earth building technology.
projectvarchitecture thank and congratulate all of the participants for their unparalleled dedication and energy on site, who should all be very proud of the way they worked together and the quality of the works they have helped produce for Most Mira and this disenfranchised community. We also thank Most Mira and Lehm Ton Erde for making it all possible and Association of Architects BiH for their help with publicity, and we look forward to planning the next workshop in Spring 2018!
Participants: Kemal Pervanić (MM), Martin Rauch (LTE), Thomas Honermann (LTE), Leonar Stieger (LTE), Tim Coles, Adriana Keast, Admir Islamčević, Dajana Papaz, Emina Čičkušić, Emina Osivčić, Kenan Muslić, Milica Borić, Nedžla Seferović, Zivko Vasiljević, Zoran Uljarević, Lucy Dinnen (PV), Vernes Čauševic (PV) and Ben Moore.
All photos courtesy of Adriana Keast, Kemal Pervanić and Project V.