June – August: Xirocourt– Le Rutin – Brussels – Pyrenees
At the moment: South of Toulouse

Status report:
Kilometre reading (20. August) : 237 902 km
since the beginning (18. March): 6 923 km
since last newsletter (27. June): 2 701 km
power meter: 16,3 kWh

Most listened music last month:

Outlook
since August 14: Holiday in France
September: Allier (Centre) – Netherlands – Bretagne

A rammed earth bread oven in the Allier

In June/July I stayed as an artist in residence at Polymorphe corp. Polymorphe promotes cultural and artistic activities in the countryside. Bony and Léo created the project in 2018 in the remote hamlet of ‘Le Rutin’, in the Allier département.

A time-lapse of the construction here (1min):

The aim of my residency there was to build a bread oven out of rammed earth (aka pisé). For this, a sandy and coarse-grained earth mixture is strongly compacted.I decided to use this type of e earth construction because, on the one hand, it can be realised with local materials, on the other hand, it is not technically complicated and, in contrast to other types of e earth construction, it does not require any interruptions for drying. With the help of volunteers, the team on site and a one-week ‘chantier participatif’, we managed to complete the construction work within 18 days.

The construction was carried out in 3 stages:

1 – Masonry with raw stones and lime mortar.
2 – Pisé with a team of +/- 6 people, mixing, transporting, tamping earth in a previously fabricated formwork.
3 – Construction of a roof from acacia and chestnut trunks, covered with tiles found on site.

A pizza oven made from construction rubble in Brussels

In Brussels I was invited to construct a neighbourhood oven for the project ‘Recup Ton Quartier / Recup Jij Wijk’. RTQ/RJW is located in a public space along the canal, between Molenbeek and Anderlecht. It is situated at a crossroads of streets and paths where litter is regularly deposited. I decided to work with the materials and resources available and build a pizza oven out of scrap materials and construction waste.

The oven consists of a wooden shell filled with 1.5 cubic metres of rubble and waste, which enclose the oven dome and provide insulation and thermal inertia through their mass. The attached bench is constructed according to the same principle.

The roof consists of shingles made from 250 beer cans collected from around the site. Most of the materials used in the construction were either reused or found in the surrounding area.

We dug a hole and set a foundation of paving stones, sawed wood, made our own paint, painted, drilled and assemnled a casing. We filled the empty casing with stones and rubble, therefore crushed tiles and built a dome out of clay and lime. We pulled nails out of pallets and built a bench out of pallet wood to sit next to the stove. We collected beer cans, cut them up, flattened them, folded them and nailed them to the roof as shingles.
Then we made a fire, spread tomato sauce on pizza dough and put cheese on it.

Wind mills in Brussels – first contact

Supporting the organisation ‘La Pile’ in the initial contact with neighbours of a social housing estate in the north of Brussels. Through a two-day intervention, first contacts were exchanged and acquaintances were made, opening up possibilities for future cooperation on energy-related issues. The long-term goal is to create a European pilot project for cooperative energy production – a wind turbine for the housing unit.

My tasks were to create, design and produce the technical and mechanical parts of 90 paper wind mills, as well as to run the workshop on site. The rotors were folded and decorated by the children of the housing unit.

I’m going on holiday now. Have a nice summer and see you next time, Dani

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