Eco-Archi in Malawi

So, yeah, this week saw the start of the production of our CSEB - Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks, also called "SSB" for Stabilized Soil bricks, or BTC in French, for Blocs de Terre Comprimée (manque un S pour stabilisée mais bref).  They are much more eco-friendly than the fired bricks (using a looot of wood to get cooked) or concrete (using a loooot of (imported) cement), as these blocks should count only 5% of cement for the stabilization, and don't need any plaster or paint or any other layer on them at the end to be confortable and beautiful. So some soil has already been extracted and sieved, and kinda analyzed ( a bit too roughly unfortunately), we had a bag of cement ready, some water nearby, a large area for the curing was prepared, the machine was assembled and we were ready to start testing ! We made our first blocks on Monday afternoon, guiding the guys for the dry mixing, the wet mixing, the steps for the compression, the handling on the block...

Apart from the developed drawings of the dormitory and family cottages, this week has seen progress on the materials...  On Tuesday we went to pay a visit to the executive director of Mulanje Conservation Trust in Mulanje, to learn more about the bamboos and other trees and plants that we could get from him, as well as SSBs and tiles that were used for the offices there. Being himself the son of an architect who worked here, he's pretty aware of all this. beautiful way among the tea estates of Mulanje some tiles had to be replaced as they were broken by the wrong placement of solar panels And on Friday, another architectural visit, this time to Mr Sonke, a very special architect-engineer who keeps "engineering" in the true manner ! He's living in the most special house I have ever been to, a "football" house that looks more like a water tower than a home ;) But it's actually very cosy inside, and of course the view is magnificent.  ...