ALCHEMY OF THE MUD, Mosorin

Main work activity is alchemy, by putting our hands in the mud we will make magic. By making wooden moulds and earthen bricks, clay plasters, clay reliefs and earthen floor, we will learn traditional building crafts and contribute to building Earth architecture centre. KFZ has for many years been building the centre through work of many enthusiasts, groups of volunteers, school children, architects and many other keen travellers, that head towards this interesting village. We will help build self-sustainable workshop place for training students, self-constructors and craftspeople for the (re)construction of earth houses. We will contribute to preservation and passing on knowledge on traditional crafts. We will learn about permaculture and promote locally the ideas that lie in core of these techniques. By making small interventions in local community such volunteers will spread the idea on importance and benefits of living in harmony with nature to local community. In last 10 years, we’ve been doing many workshops in this field and during the 3rd edition of Regio Earth festival in 2019, we made a wooden structure and a green roof for a 40 m2 classroom. During the camp, we would like to finish infills of this wooden structure using different techniques: adobe, wattle-and-daub, light clay etc. In order to do it, we would do some earth tests and produce many adobes in first few days of the camp. During the second week of the camp, we would make a fired brick floor with several layers (dig earth, put pebbles, geotextile, sand and bricks.) In last few days we will make clay plasters – different layers and we would finish the camp by doing some clay decorations. We will use this classroom for future lectures and trainings. Study part: All the workcamp activities will be realised through learning and knowledge and ideas application process. Through workshops on earth architecture and building volunteers will first learn about the basic ideas that underlie these techniques and have a chance to apply gained knowledge. In order to put the knowledge in wider frame the volunteers will have a chance to get to know and experience local culture and tradition as well as a way of living of local community.