COSTRUIRE SENZA MATTONI

The restoration works and the workshop

The workshop “Costruire senza mattoni” (building without bricks) comes from a collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Terramara di Montale (Castelnuovo Rangone, Italy). During the 3-day workshop, we’ve restored the Park houses’ walls, whose clay plasters urgently needed maintenance. The restoration works have been carried out by combining archaeological data and the expertise of the green building experts from FAR-MS and Terraepaglia.

The restoration of the old park huts has been a perfect chance for the workshop participants to try their hand at making the clay plasters from scratch. We started by examining the earth samples, which each participant had brought from home, analyzing them through both empirical and site tests. Once the participants had gained a bit more confidence with the raw materials, we’ve made the different clay mixtures and applied the plaster on the reed walls of the huts.

We worked with three different layers of clay plaster: the first with high clay content for better adherence to the wall’s reeds, the second with a high amount of hemp shives for increasing the thickness and leveling, and the final with high sand and hemp fibers content for cracks reduction and weather resistance.