For centuries craftsmanship, the predecessor of industry, has shaped culture and everyday life. Crafted products show region-specific, social, political and economic conditions as well as cultural and religious characteristics. During several trips cultural worker and artist curator Laura Bernhardt, and photographer Benjamin Tafel have undertaken a search for traces of the still active craft workshops in Greece.

In dialogue with a selection of protagonists the project examines their situation, their emotional relationship with their profession and their prospects. The result is a series of portraits that show the artisan in relation to his or her profession and the current situation of upheaval. How important is the traditional value that is passed on from generation to generation, from hand to hand? How is the artisan connected to his or her profession in these times of crisis?

The authors are less interested in a nostalgic view but rather focus on the rediscovery of crafted products, their appreciation and the artisans’ emotional relationship to their profession. What is the meaning of low-tech in times of economic crisis and how can small businesses survive with few orders? The different views of the artisans’ stories created a portrait of an era that can point to the past as well as to the future.

Read more: From Hand to Hand: Stories about Craftsmanship in Greece Today. Via DAMN. Thanks to Sara Dandois.

The fujara is a long 3-holed fipple flute played in standing position with the flute held close to the body. It’s played using the natural harmonics system, which means the different tones are played by controlling the strength of inblown air. Using only three holes, the diatonic major scale can be reached playing two and a half octaves. Due to the natural harmonics the tuning will always be a compromise, but Belgian flutemaker and musician Winne Clement puts a great deal of effort in tuning and balancing the tones, in such a way that playing together with Western tuned instruments is possible.

All his flutes are made of harvested branches of local inland wood such as ash, elder, maple, hazle, etc. The wood is carefully chosen and cut in winter time – with respect for the environment, not damaging the donating trees – and put to dry for a long period of time. When making the flute the wood is never split in half to hollow it out, but hand-drilled with special old forged drills, leaving the main structure of the wood intact, benefiting the sound, and following the natural curves of the wood. No Tech Magazine visits Winne Clement in his studio in Ghent, where he explains us his tools and methods.

Ancient Drilling Tools

Clement’s fujara flutes are literally born in the forest. “Every year in winter, I walk through the woods in search of suitable branches. This has to happen in winter, because the sap content in branches is low. The wood will then dry faster and is less likely to crack. The making of a flute starts when I saw off a branch, because I already know what kind of flute I want to make from it. Most branches are curved, but they can be easily straightened once they are dry. The wood needs to be dried for about four years.”

The craftsman drills the branches using antique drilling tools. “Initially, I tried to bore the branches with modern tools but that didn’t work. Modern tools lack precision because they grind the wood. Old drills ladle out the wood. Branches always have a softer spot in the middle and a large ancient hand drill draws itself into it. It takes me about three hours to drill a branch. Most of my drills date from the second half of the nineteenth century. Farmers used them to drill water pipes, for example. I find them on eBay.”

“I know a Norwegian guy, already in his seventies, who is still making these large hand drills, aimed at traditional shipbuilders. But he’s a stubborn man who has been making the same type of drill for 50 years now. If you ask him for a slightly different type of drill, he turns around and walks away.”

Value for Money

It’s not just old drills — Clement’s studio holds a large collection of many other types of old tools. However, he’s not a nostalgic. Rather, it’s about value for money. “Antique tools are simply better than most modern tools which are readily available. Although it’s still possible to find modern tools of good quality, they are much more expensive compared to the antique tools you can find on eBay. I’m lucky to be living in a time when everyone clears the attic and sells grandfather’s stuff on the internet.”

“I don’t exclude modern technology categorically. If there are new techniques to dry wood, for example, I will try them out. They usually don’t work that good, but I want to find that out myself. I also use industrially sharpened knives for cutting the sound system — the sharper the knives, the more precise the result. But my most important modern tool is the internet. It gives me inspiration, knowledge, tools and a sales channel. I work in a traditional way using antique tools and methods, but I would never have made it without my laptop.”

Shepherds

The fujara has a unique sound with very rich sounding multiphonics, grain and timbre. Its origin lays in the middle of Slovakia, and it’s assumed that its roots would lay with the 3-holed flutes played by the tambourines in the 12th and 13th century in Europe. The fujara was played by the shepherds on their long journeys away from home. It’s said when played for the sheep it would calm them down and ease the herd.

More info: Fujara Flutes. The making of a 7 holed fipple Kaval flute is shown in the beautiful video below. The second video shows the maker playing the flute. Also check out our earlier article on hand powered drilling tools and machines, and earlier woodworking posts.

Instead of building a traditional 3D printer, Daniël de Bruin decided to harken back to a past when pantographs and mills ruled the shop floor by making a device which doesn’t require software or electricity to work its magic. His 3D printer is driven by a 7.5 pound weight. “The weight allows me to be connected with the process because there’s no external force involved like electricity; it’s still me that’s making the print,” says de Bruin. “By physically building and powering the machine, the products that come out of it are the result of all the energy that has gone into it.”

For those who complain about the speed of FDM 3D printers, de Bruin says his machine is actually faster. It all comes down to a nozzle diameter of approximately 2mm – rather than the 0.35mm – 0.4mm which is the standard for most 3D printers. While there may be a slight loss in quality with his process, he says his old-school machine can print objects using clay material, pasta, starch bio plastics, and pretty much any material that can fit through the extrusion nozzle, which doesn’t require heat.

See & read more at Daniël de Bruin and 3Dprinterworld. Seen at the Milan Furniture Fair. Related: Human powered 3D-printer.

See them in action. Via The Shelter Blog.

“Stone arch bridges are amongst the strongest in the world. The technology has stood the test of time. The Romans built stone arch bridges and aqueducts with lime mortar more than twenty centuries ago. Arches and vaults were also the determining structural design element of churches and castles in the Middle Ages. There are stone arch bridges which have survived for hundreds and even thousands of years, and are still as strong today as when they were first constructed.”

“The main reason that western countries moved away from stone arch bridges is because of the high labour costs involved in their construction. In industrialised countries, it is cheaper to use pre-stressed concrete rather than employ a lot of masons and casual labourers. In the economic environment of East Africa and the majority of developing countries, stone arch bridges provide a more affordable and practical option.”

“A larger proportion of locally available resources are used in stone bridges as they can be built with local labour and stones. In contrast, raw materials and machines have to be imported for the construction of concrete bridges and specialized expertise is required. Compared to expensive aggregates, local stones are a strong, affordable material and they are often available in the vicinity (10-15 km) of the construction site. There is no need for expensive steel bars, aggregates, concrete or galvanised pipes that have to be hauled over long distances.”

Stone arch bridges, a strong and cost effective technology for rural roads. A practical manual for local governments, BTC Uganda & Practical Action.

Related:

• Covered Bridges: How to Build and Rebuild Them.
• The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU).
• Nubian Vaults.

“Hi everybody my name is Chris. I choose my woodworking projects based on whatever happens to inspire me”.

In this video, Chris builds a foot powered treadle lathe. Great project, great video.

Via Old Engineering.

Previously:

• Make your own treadle lathe (PDF plans)
• Robin Wood, bowlturner (video)
• The battle of the bowlturners (video)

Artist and maker Tim Hunkin repairs Victorian watches. On the picture: a 1908 Waltham pocket watch, Tim Hunkin.

“Our mattress is worn out. We need a new one, but I’ve been dreading buying a new one. I don’t like the waste of it all: The ignoble dragging of the old mattress to the curb. The prospect of sleeping on a brand new construct of toxic foam and fire retardants… In Greece, Italy and France mattresses are made by local craftsmen, and are stuffed with 100% wool. These mattresses basically last for life. When the wool gets compressed the mattress guys will empty it out, fluff it up, and re-stuff it, adding more wool if necessary.” [1]

“The bed Mary bought was made by Signor Oldani, a Milanese bed-maker and upholsterer. He made beds the Italian way, and the way we used to make mattresses in England before the introduction of short-lived internally sprung ones.

The beauty of the mattress is that when it needs a wash, the wool can be pulled out, stuffed, in batches, into pillow cases, put through the washing machine and after drying, carded back into fluffy pile before being returned to the mattress cover.

Every few years, it needs to be re-carded, as the wool slowly compacts, says Mary. In Italy during the summer, the mattress man, il cardatore, tours Italian homes, pulls out the wool from their mattresses, re-cards it, adds some more, as the process reduces the stuffing a bit, rebuttons and then sews the mattress cover back up again. Mary submitted her mattress to this process four times.” [2]

“Totally by chance, I found two places in Paris that still make their own 100% wool mattresses by hand… It was ready two days later. They told me to come back in 10 years to have the mattress redone: they pick it up in the morning, take out the wool stuffing, clean and refluff it, put a new cover on it, and then deliver it back to you before bedtime.” [3]

Read more: 1 / 2 / 3. Via Root Simple.

“In the state of Ceará he found leather-workers whose hand-made process dated from the sixteenth century. Here they were still tanning leather without using chrome. To move beyond the colors of brown and black, he pushed to find a way to color his shoes with natural dyes. To create a more sustainable sole, Lima’s team began experimenting with using old tires, eventually creating a tool to craft the tires and separate the rubber from the steel wires.”

Watch the video: “Brazilian Slow Shoes“. More about Caboclo shoes.

“Of course making wooden table ware for a living means making thousands of items every year, which seems rather a tall order when you consider the technology being used, but Rob insists that his pole lathe can turn out wooden ware as quickly as the mechanised equivalent. This theory has been put to the test and proven correct. As Robin explains in the
film, when he’s powered up, so is his lathe and he can get results quickly. When he stops the lathe turning he can adjust the wood instantaneously, whereas when you power down a mechanical lathe you have to wait for the machine to slow down and stop turning in it’s own time.”

“Any fool can make something more complex but it takes real genius to make things simple again“. A new video by Artisan Media. Robin Wood’s blog.

Via Toolemera. Previously: Make your own treadle lathe.

The ‘Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit’ (SUDU) in Ethiopia demonstrates that it is possible to construct multi-story buildings using only soil and stone. By combining timbrel vaults and compressed earth blocks, there is no need for steel, reinforced concrete or even wood to support floors, ceilings and roofs. The SUDU could be a game-changer for African cities, where population grows fast and building materials are scarce.

In “Tiles as a substitute for steel“, we highlighted the medieval art of the medieval timbrel vault, which allowed for structures that today no architect would dare to build without steel reinforcements. The technique is cheap, fast, ecological and durable. Shortly after the article was published in 2008, the timbrel vault made a comeback with two rather spectacular buildings: Richard Hawkes’ Crossway Passive House in England, and Peter Rich’s Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa.

The cardboard formwork technique described last week promises to bring even more dramatic architecture, but at least as interesting is the news that the catalan vault is now also applied to a much more modest form of housing: the Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU), a low-cost family dwelling built in Ethiopia.

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU).

Though less spectacular at first sight, it could form the proof that even megacities can be constructed without the use of steel, concrete or wood. The double-story building, which was completed in last summer, is entirely made from soil and presents an economical and ecological solution to many of Africa’s most urgent problems. The SUDU stands in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a country with a population of more than 80 million (growing at an average 7 percent per year). The building is a joint project of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC).

The SUDU combines past technologies from different continents, resulting in a new approach to low-tech construction adapted to specific local conditions. In the Mediterranean region, where the timbrel vault originated, the tiles have traditionally been made from fired clay. In the SUDU, the construction technique is united with the African tradition of cement-stabilized, soil-pressed bricks, which use locally available soil. This technique is called compressed earth block (CEB) construction. The SUDU has been built largely following the same techniques used for the Mapungubwe Centre in South Africa.

Urban housing

The SUDU was designed to achieve both environmental and economic sustainability. Because Ethiopia has few material and financial resources, the design is aimed at eliminating the reliance on imported, expensive and energy-intensive building materials such as steel and concrete. More unusual is that the building also excludes the use of wood, for the simple reason that wood is equally scarce in the country. The entire structure is made from locally available construction materials – and in the case of Ethiopia, these are very few: soil and stone.

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU).

One of the most challenging present problems for Africa (and throughout the developing world) is the tremendous deficit in housing for the urban poor. In Ethiopia, this is reflected in the ubiquitous informal housing, comprising perhaps 80% of the built environment of its capital, Addis Ababa. The most common vernacular construction method – construction with Eucalyptus wood and mud – is an economically and environmentally sustainable method of construction, but the problem of such constructions is that they are limited to one story – putting a huge strain on available land.

Thus, this vernacular technology has been more recently replaced by large urban housing projects of reinforced concrete, heavily subsidized by the government. These massive edifices of concrete and steel neither offer a model for frugal, environmentally or economically sustainable construction, nor do they offer a low-cost alternative to housing because they are too expensive to construct. The result is that more and more people are forced to be living on the streets. Whether it is the United States or Ethiopia, governments seem to prefer homeless people over shanty-towns.

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU).

In poorer areas of Addis Ababa, dwellings are often constructed from corrugated metal. These dwellings cannot be expanded upon for multi-story construction, yet sprawl outward, consuming limited resources including wood, expensive imported materials, and land.

Urban density

The SUDU is an exploration of a “medium ground” between single story informal dwelling and massive scale urban density, as studies have shown that even two-story buildings dramatically impact urban density. As the example of Tokyo shows, a megacity can be largely based on double-story buildings. Because the other aim is to build using only locally available materials, and wood reserves are scarce, the goals of SUDU were to build two stories in soil – a significant challenge without the aid of steel, concrete or milled lumber. Multiple-story soil architecture has a long tradition in Africa, though none of it has been constructed without wooden beams.

Building multiple stories in soil is a significant challenge without the aid of steel, concrete or lumber

As soil and stone have limited tensile capacity, building with these materials demands compression-only structural solutions. For walls carrying dominantly vertical loads, this criterium is easily satisfied. However, once a space must be spanned, beam elements – which work in bending – are typically required. A beam, as a structural system, demands that its section can accomodate tension and compression forces, which is not possible when building in stone or soil only.

The Sustainable Urban Dwelling Unit (SUDU) under construction.

By adapting local soil knowledge to the production of soil stablized tiles, however, it is possible to introduce the technology of timbrel vaulting to allow floor and roof systems of pure compression in multiple story buildings. Ethiopia has a rich soil, which contains high levels of clay particles. Almost all excavated material in the city of Addis Ababa is a possible source for the material needed to build new structures. The SUDU uses rammed earth techniques to construct the first level of the building, with a 60 cm wide wall structure. The ceilings and floors and the building are done using a tiled vauling technique using sun-dried tiles (first floor) and loam (for the roof) made from the very same soil.

Contrary to most other vaulting techniques, the catalan vault does require little to no formwork, again bypassing the need for wood.

Model for low-cost housing

Apart from the ecological and financial benefits, the construction technique used in the SUDU offers additional advantages. By drawing upon traditional methods, it engenders pride and social cohesion within the local community. And by using only locally available materials, it provides local jobs, introduces new skills and stimulates self-sufficiency. Through the economic benefits, the SUDU may become a model low-cost housing unit for the urban poor in Africa. It is meant to be a showcase to convince decision makers, economists, urban planners and architects to rethink traditional building methods and find new ways to build a town or even a city.

The construction of the SUDU was led by Lara Davis, who published a blog where the building process is documented from A to Z. There is also a movie. The BLOCK Research Group of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) has a webpage that links to all the research papers on the construction method. A book was presented November 25. Also of interest is a special architectural 2010 issue of the ADTF Journal published by the African Technology Development Forum. Several articles deal specifically with timbrel vaulting building methods, and outline some of the remaining challenges:

• “Tile vaulted systems for low-cost construction in Africa“.
• “Design and Construction of the Mapungubwe National Park Interpretive Centre, South Africa“.

Previously:

• Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault
• Timbrel vaulting in South Africa by Peter Rich
• Timbrel vaulting using cardboard formwork
• Engineering for the ecological age: lessons from history
• Building with mud and steel frames
• Building with pumice
• How to build a reciprocal roof frame
• How to build an earthbag dome
• How to build a medieval city
• Birch bark sauna
• Innovation and tradition: the complete works of Hassan Fathy online
• Why older buildings are more sustainable
• The solar envelope: how to heat and cool cities without fossil fuels

Lara Davis, Matthias Rippman and Philippe Block from the Swiss BLOCK Research Group at the ETH Zurich University have taken the centuries old timbrel vaulting technique one step further by incorporating high-tech design tools (software and CNC fabrication) and low-tech materials (cardboard boxes and wooden palettes).

Find pictures and the research paper here or see the summary below.

Timbrel vaulting (also known as ‘Catalan vaulting’ or ‘thin-tile vaulting’) offers a sustainable roof and floor construction method because it uses fewer building materials than conventional techniques. Timbrel vaulting employs the use of good structural form to achieve a minimal shell thickness and requires no formwork. The new tools designed by the Swiss researchers aim to combine these advantages with a whole new range of complex shapes, which they call ‘freeform shells’:

“This research project presents important advances in timbrel vaulting, made possible through innovation in form finding, guidework systems and construction methods. A full-scale prototype has been realized with the application of new research in the following areas: newly developed structural design tools based upon the Thrust Network Approach (TNA), which allow one to generate novel shapes for funicular (i.e. compression-only) structures; an efficient cardboard box guidework system, which allows for a vaulted surface to be described in an accurate manner in space for the mason; and adaptations upon traditional timbrel vaulting techniques, which have introduced strategies for continuous tiling patterns, shell thickening, and sequencing for structural stability during construction.”

Matthias Rippmann designed both the prototype and the software tool, which is free to download:

“RhinoVAULT is software that allows for the intuitive design of compression-only shapes, offering a maximum control of the geometry. This software is written particularly for shaping unreinforced masonry vaults, but can also be used for designing efficient freeform shells. Based on the Thrust Network Approach (TNA), which uses a force network as discretization of the shape, it is possible to internally redistribute forces within the network using force diagrams. This enables the user to generate exciting forms far beyond typical ‘hanging-net’ morphologies.”

Contrary to the traditional timbrel vaulting techniques, these new forms require a continuous formwork system. While this approach seems to negate the inherent material and labour efficiency of thin-tile vaulting, the researchers introduce a formwork system using cardboard that still possesses the material economy of the traditional Catalan shell:

“The cardboard formwork implemented in this project is fabricated with 2-D CAD-CAM cutting and gluing processes and is assembled on site. The system’s rapid fabrication, lightweight transportation, and speed of erection and de-centering dramatically reduce the material and labour-based costs of construction. An inexpensive and potentially reusable/recyclable material, this lightweight cardboard formwork extends the viability of thin-tile vaulting to freeform construction.”

The formwork system is expandable, essentially composed of simple boxes supported by stacked shipping palettes. Using palettes for the first rough approximation of the final vault shape offers several advantages: it reduces the volume of cardboard to be used, it facilitates easy access during construction as the palettes can be arranged in step-like configuration, and it decreases the size of the boxes, ensuring that the unrolled cutting pattern of boxes fit to the limited machine-size of the CNC cutting machine.

A particular challenge is de-centering, which is the process of removing the formwork from the surface of the shell. This is a sensitive process, because the entire formwork should be removed equally and simultaneously to avoid dangerous asymmetric loading cases from below. Such asymmetric loading would induce bending in a compression-only structure and potentially cause cracking and failure. To prevent this, the researchers developped a special mechanism:

“The entire formwork sits on top of a series of sealed plastic tubes containing cardboard spacers. Each spacer, which consists of a folded stack of cardboard sheets, taped together, supports the corners of typically four palettes. After the vault is completed, the tubes are filled with water, saturating the cardboard, causing it to compress under the load of the palettes and effectively to lower the formwork.”

The construction (and eventual destruction) of the prototype, built by Lara Davis, is documented in a time-lapse video.

Davis L., Rippmann M., Pawlofsky T. and Block P. Efficient and Expressive Thin-tile Vaulting using Cardboard Formwork, Proceedings of the IABSE-IASS Symposium 2011, London, UK. (PDF).

Picture below: testing the strength of the structure.

Previously:

• Tiles as a substitute for steel: the art of the timbrel vault
• Timbrel vaulting in South Africa by Peter Rich
• Engineering for the ecological age: lessons from history
• Building with mud and steel frames
• Building with pumice
• How to build a reciprocal roof frame
• How to build an earthbag dome
• How to build a medieval city
• Birch bark sauna
• Innovation and tradition: the complete works of Hassan Fathy online
• Why older buildings are more sustainable

Pictured: Blair Sligar, who builds furniture and sculptures from salvaged and local materials.

Via Clockworker & Dude Craft.