Day 3: Eco building and Spanish Culture

Eco building is matter of priorities. Living in the countryside allows you to be in contact with the materials that surround you, materials that you can transform into a structure. What’s the perfect house? The one in which you like everything you look at, where there is no need to hide any material because you love it all, like your own skin. Choosing materials is more than just rationalizing which physical properties you desire, like insulation or strength; it is a choice of what inspires you, of what sustains or feeds you. Personal sustenance is part of sustainability. This is the eco building philosophy of the Stagones builders.

Today we worked with cob – a natural construction material of clay, sand, and straw. We mixed the clay with our feet in a tub of water, feeling the soft clay squeeze between our toes, noticing how much water it absorbed, how it dried to our skin. This is part of what it means to understand the building materials: to be sensually connected with them and thus better understand their characteristics. We mixed this clay with sand and water, by stomping our bare feet, and rolling the mixture over a tarp. Then, we stomped in the straw. By exploring the material with our fingers, hands, and feet – by shaping it, throwing it, dropping it – we learned what was the perfect consistency, texture, and moisture level.

This building method is low cost but labor intensive, and is best done by a small team of people. Together we worked to continue building the wall of an outdoor community kitchen that will serve future workshops and gatherings at Iliosporoi and Stagones. We added the cob to the wall with our hands, with simple hand-crafted tools, and “strumenti di fortuna”. While many of us had no building experience, working closely together with the supportive and very encouraging trainers, we were able to quickly learn the technique and build up the wall. One day was not enough to finish the construction, but we will all remember that part of this community kitchen was built by our hands (and feet!). We hope to come back next year and share a meal in the final result.

That night, the cultural night hosted by the Spanish group started with the projection of a short film from the Canary Islands. This short was about the conquest of the Islands by the Spanish kingdom and how the aboriginals struggled to fight against them until they were defeated. After this cultural introduction, dinner was ready, and we had the opportunity to taste a few dishes with different flavours and textures, giving us a picture of their mixed culture. We tasted an arid place with sweet people who like to cook with palm honey, bananas and guava, and, on the other hand, they shared spicy sauces, strong goat cheese and sugar cane rum to lighten up the event.

Beyond that, the night brought us not just a little piece of Canary Island gastronomy but also an artisanal clay pin that will travel back home with each one of us.