Projects

Othona

Using rammed earth in a community setting, running a building course for their volunteers, digging the material up on their site was all aimed at keeping community up, and cost down. Othona are a community established in the 1940’s and based on their own site on the Essex coast. They have a group of buildings which allow them to come together as a community on a regular basis for several days in a row.
They are off grid and so when planning a new dormitory and meeting space the emphasis was on maintaing very low running costs and energy burden. As a result they approached ZEDfactory Limited for a building design which maintains a comfortable temperature summer and winter occupied or empty.
The building is built on a raised platform in recognition of its risk of flooding (it is metres from the sea wall).
The earth walls were built in situ by community volunteers and others using a basic kit of parts. Volunteers and a flexible approach to formwork design based on scaffold planks and tubes and tourniquette bindings has allowed the community to keep costs down. The formwork shows an interesting combination of the benefits of both low tech traditional formwork and the use of larger assemblies associated with commercial formwork.
At the same time the thermal mass of the building is high, and will be highly insulated with the addition of straw bale cladding.