Strawbale Wall at the Boom Festival

2010-12-01T13:55:14-08:00

Welcome everyone, to Boom! It's an art-based psytrance music festival located in the desert of eastern Portugal. It happens every other year and they are really making an effort to have all of the structures as natural and earth-conscious as we can make it. I'm here to play with bamboo as much as possible and build a strawbale wall around a movie screen/workshop area that needed some added sound isolation. I didn't know exactly what I was getting in to when I arrived, but it turned out great, and there's a lot of photos here to give you a glimpse at my adventure. I brought along dear friends, Sebastian, Julia and Fezzo to help make it happen. Dozens of other bamboo builders and volunteers from around the world learn to get in the mud and see what we can do with all this clay, sand and straw. we start with an outline of the wall created by some locally grown bamboo poles I decide to use the bamboo framework as external pinning and stack the bales into columns between them extensive staking with hand carved bamboo splits help toe nail each bale to the next. Thanks to Danny Pando for making all those beautiful stakes and doing it fast enough to keep up with the flow. I make a really fancy tying system to hold the external framework together but only reveal a beautiful simple lash once plastered. My fearless friends, Sebastian and Ilima, help me get the bales up to 14 courses high! Lots of hammering and balancing involved on this one. We also spend a few days shaving the corners of the bales and shaping the form as much as possible. Then comes the mud The first coat over the bales is a basic clay slip Our head honcho and bamboo guru, Gerard, gets into it! working all together we cover 300 bales in about 2 days! Then, we start a finish plaster mix in two huge pits lined with old billboard material and yes, the most fun and efficient way to mix, is to just dive right in! besides, getting coated in mud helps protect us from the scorching sun! diving the edges up to the bamboo provides a nice place for a cold joint and gives each volunteer a sense of accomplishment, one section at a time. plus the juxtaposition of mud and bamboo is so beautiful! already a great place for our snack and juice break, i will never forget those white cheese sandwiches! we keep plastering even through the night Julia works on a sculptural bench it turns out just lovely check out the site-found crystal that we integrate into it! on the back side of the wall, we build shelves for the 'marketplace' i create a nest to hide the joint between the edging branches meanwhile, I help make this special component that will support the fanning shade sails and a shade structure starts to go up around the theater area we spend an entire night spreading out ten dump truck loads of sand throughout the arena in use! After the festival, we take down the sails, but get to leave the wall standing. It's going to be used as a drive in movie theather for the local community. long distance aerial shot from my campsite hard work pays off! photo credits: Julia Bonneheim & Erica Ann

Suscol Strawbale Project - Part 1

2009-06-16T11:59:16-07:00

Now on to a slightly larger project. I have joined forces with Bay Area Architect, Bob Theis, to finish a strawbale building for an inter-tribal Native American sacred land. The project was started last summer by another person, but they were unable to complete it as started. It is interesting coming into a project that you didn't begin, but so far we are making the best of it. It has an octagonal framework with strawbale infill, cobbed windows, skylight & living roof. The first week on the project we were assisted by an Americorps Crew, Hoopa Tribal Community Civilian Corps (TCCC). It was interesting getting muddy with these young natives, whom for the most part were delighted with the change of tasks--building with alternative materials instead of maintaining trails. Earthbag foundation Octagonal roof framing Setting up the plaster prep area, glorious shade! Bob demonstrated how to tie a custom bale Gravel bag course work for the foundation Yoshi, fills voids with a clay-straw mix Processing local soil, from pile to plaster Tracy Thieriot (Tactile Interiors) and her assistant Yoshi work on filling the structure Americorps crew members make fill mix, essentially straw-clay that is really heavy on the clay Covering the bales with slip Tracy and Ceasar keep on slipping! Curving slpits of bamboo over an open fire. These will be used to support the arches over the cobbed window openings. Sculpting the window openings making 'paned' glass windows a special project for a special place... stay tuned!

day one design

Strawbale Wall at the Boom Festival

Suscol Strawbale Project - Part 1