Constructing with loam?

// Lecture + Film + Discussion + Clay and Loam Samples + Food and Drink
Fri 12 Mai 2023, 6 pm
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Foyer

After the first Friday Group in April, the second edition revolves around the question “Constructing with Loam?”. Starting point is the GOLEHM Initiative, a network of partners from the sciences, industry, crafts and trades, and public and private persons. The aim is to promote solid construction using loam in Central Germany. Ten thousand loam houses – of special mention here is the “Wellerbau”, a wet loam technique – in the arid region of Central Germany; they form the most extensive loam building stock in Europe. The dry climate and the available loess clay offer absolutely optimal conditions for cultivating this tradition further and promoting the change to a more sustainable circular economy.

The event pans the focus across the Bauhaus ceramics workshop in Dornburg, the students who collected the clay from the banks of the river Saale, who chopped wood for the ceramic furnace, and who grew their own food. It goes on to address contemporary, circular-economy building methods and a building practice that places building stock in an organic context to its environment. It also casts light on national and conservative charges that are associated with the material and its uses.