Speakers for Conference at Clayfest 2024: Inside Earth confirmed!
Our first speakers for Conference at Clayfest 2024: Inside Earth, on Friday 19th July 2024, are now confirmed! Explore here the inspirational speakers and their biographies.
Tickets on sale now!
Standard Admission Price just £120 + booking fee
The Elgiva Theatre, Chesham, HP5 1HR
Friday 19th July Conference
1. Nikolay Shahpazov
Nikolay is an associate at Bennetts Associates who has pioneered the use of site-excavated subsoil to manufacture ultra-low carbon earth blocks for building. Nikolay’s role is finding ways to implement the use of regenerative building materials within the practice.
Bennetts Associates’ first project to use the blocks is the Apex, a new laboratory building that forms part of the Tribeca development near King’s Cross in London and will be occupied by the London BioScience Innovation Centre (LBIC). It is the first project in the UK where the use of earth blocks has been achieved at this scale. The building will be completed in early 2024.
Over the last 7 years, he has been looking for ways to move away from designing and building with carbon intensive, resource depleting building materials. His journey started in rural Devon where with the help of Barry Honeyset and Kevin McCabe he developed a design for five affordable eco self built houses using local regenerative building materials. Although the design was not implemented, it lead him to doing two competitions with Expedition Engineering and Atelier 10, where the use of site excavated earth was pushed to its limits.
TALK: Earth, the most sustainable building material we have got
It will also show a current project where we are planning to use earth blocks to form a large 6m high vaulted space. There will be few competition entries examples demonstrating how rammed earth can be used for larger structures including a 30m high design.
Using site excavated subsoil for making earth blocks for the building, designing a large vault with earth blocks, scaling up rammed earth construction.
The presentation will cover some of the main aspects of making earth blocks from site subsoil.
2. Jan Glasmeier
Jan Glasmeier is a German Architect. Jan is holding a Diploma in Engineering form the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany. Before moving to South-East Asia, Jan has worked with Foster+Partners in London and Abu Dhabi, as well as Arup in Singapore.
For the past seven years Jan has been working on the Thai-Burma border building for marginalized migrant communities from Burma. During his work, he was able to create a very strong bond with local communities and was able to complete about 60 projects (New Mae Tao Clinic Campus, Kwel Ka Baung School, New Training Center for Mae Tao Clinic, all Thailand, Wake-Up School, Nakhivale, Uganda, etc.)
Jan believes, that as Architects we should embrace cultural building traditions, which, over centuries, have proven to be energy efficient and sustainable. This traditional knowledge is often ignored by prevailing architects. It is Jan’s mission to bring back low-tech methods of creating building solutions which are a pure reaction to an individual person’s or community’s needs.
TALK: Examples of earthen community projects in the global south.
The design process is highly collaborative and consultative at each step, ensuring that the plans that sensitive to the local context, environment, and needs of the client. We will showcase the flexibility, durability, and sustainability of local materials and natural building which are often centering around recycled wood, bamboo, earthen bricks and natural plasters.
New Build featuring Natural Finishes. In our brief we will showcase examples of community architecture projects we have build over the past ten years.
Our projects are promoting sustainable architecture that meets a social purpose.
3. Nic Donati
Nic Donati, Rancho Mastatal's Director of Natural Building and Appropriate Technology and lead builder. He has been at the ranch for over 10 years and in that time designed and personally built many buildings including his own house.
He first came to the Ranch in 2007 and fell in love with the community and lifestyle he experienced there. Always good with his hands and wanting to get stuck in meant he was able to develop a wide range of skills both at the Ranch and other farms around the world. The lure of the Ranch both as a community and working environment have continually drawn him back and he now considers the Ranch community and Mastatal his home.
He believes that to engage, educate and nurture a desire in people to change the way we live and take more responsibility for every aspect of our lives from food production, to healthcare, to energy production and everything else in between is the only way things are going to change.
TALK: Earth building at Rancho Mastatal
Nic says. “I will mainly focus on our evolution of building in the wet humid tropics and the design strategies and techniques we employ to effectively create beautiful natural buildings in a very harsh environment! Our buildings are typically traditional timber framed and wattle and daub and our style has evolved to create modern looking structures with refined finishes to make them appealing to local people.”
4. Becky Little & Tom Morton
Becky Little is a builder, artist and teacher working with earth and natural materials in Scotland and beyond. Her company Rebearth carries out conservation, new build, community and training projects in a wide range of earth techniques.
Tom Morton (Arc Architects) leads a diverse practice in conservation, community and eco-building projects, with a particular interest in ecological design, vernacular materials, community-led regeneration and the confluence of natural and built heritage.
In recent years they have been investigating the origins of earth construction in Scotland with particular reference to Orkney.
TALK: Earthbound Orkney - 6000 years of earth construction in Orkney
Covering heritage, archaeology, application, education.
Exploring the origins of vernacular earth construction in neolithic Orkney through archaeology, architecture and art.
5. James Henderson
James Henderson is a professional builder and natural plasterer who lives in the USA. James' company NW Natural Homes designs and build custom Straw Bale, Hempcrete and Natural Homes. James is a partner in Goldhill Clay Plaster, a company producing pre-mixed clay plaster in the USA.
James is also the president of the Natural Plasterers Guild, an organization that runs professional trainings and gatherings for people working with Natural Plaster. In 2013 James published "Earth Render, the art of clay plaster, render and paints."
TALK: Cover the world with clay plaster. Assessing and preparing different wall systems for clay plaster.
All about Natural Finishes. James will talk about the techniques of assessing the suitability of wall for a clay plaster installation and the steps in preparing the wall for clay plaster.
6. Will Stanwix
Will has been building with natural materials for the past 15 years, co-author of The Hempcrete Book Will is best known for building and renovating with hempcrete.
Lately, Will's passion for natural building has focussed on earth in construction and he was instrumental in the design and construction of the earth-domed children's nursery at HGMatthews in Bellingdon built with a combination of structural earth blocks and insulating hempcrete.
Will also designs, produces and supplies clay plasters and clay plaster ingredients and has begun adapting standard construction machinery for processing and applying site soils.
TALK: Inside earth.... faster! Exploring mechanising earth construction and the use of pre-dried block to speed up construction.
Using spray machines to spray light hemp earth insulation. Using mobile roller pan mixers to process earth faster on building sites. Using pre-dried blocks to build earth structures faster. He will be covering both new build and renovation.
7. Janna Laan Lomas
“I founded Grain Architecture in 2015 after completing my Part II at CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology), and I also co-founded NBUK (Natural Building UK) and then the Natural Materials group within ACAN (Architects Climate Action Network) in order to spread awareness and knowledge of building using natural materials. Studying at CAT gave me a real sense of urgency to impact the industry as much as possible to shift towards using low-carbon and ecologically friendly materials. Grain Architecture is a small practice (currently 4 people) specialising in sustainable design using natural materials.
We started out working on low-tech 'deep green' projects, such as a self-built roundhouse using local roundwood timbers, straw bales and clay plaster, but we are increasingly working on high-performance projects using pre-fab panels and MVHR systems. Still passionate about the purity of self-building with clay, wood and straw, we've explored various ways of bringing these materials and principles to other types of construction and integrating appropriate technology. We're now working on a wide variety of projects including listed building restoration, deep retrofits of existing buildings, new-build passivhaus and AECB building standard, and a mix of both residential and non-residential. Natural materials and environmental impact are always at the heart of everything we do at Grain, and we continuously strive for ways to improve the way our buildings are made and work. I believe we need to share knowledge on this as much as possible to keep learning and I very much look forward to talking at Clayfest this year.”
TALK: Bringing clay along an architect's journey from 'hobbit house' to passivhaus
pottery with rammed earth floor, but also in detail about my own house build project, which is currently under construction, and the ways in which I'll be using clay from the site in various forms for it's excellent thermal mass and moisture regulation properties.
As an architectural designer passionate about low-impact building using natural materials like clay, this talk will be about integrating these principles into high performance modern construction such as pre-fab panel Passivhaus. I'll talk not only about design projects including a self-build straw bale roundhouse and a
8. Tavs Jorgensen
Tavs Jorgensen is Associate Professor at the Centre For Print Research (CFPR) University of the West of England, Bristol. Jorgensen has a background in the ceramic industry where he worked as a designer before developing a career in academia. He joined the CFPR in 2017 having previously worked for the University of Plymouth. Prior to this post he taught for more than 10 years at the Royal College of Art and was also a Research Fellow at the Autonomatic Research Cluster at University College Falmouth which is widely recognised for pioneering research into the use of digital tools in design and craft practice.
Tavs’s work with Earth bricks is part of wider research project concerning innovation with clay extrusion for new applications in advanced manufacturing, ceramic industry and creative practice. Tavs are leading a several other research projects in the broad area of digital fabrication and sustainable production, including the development of mycelium base insulation, use of bio-sensors and 3D printing with bio-degradable composites.
TALK: The Development of Low-Cost Extrusion System for Earth Brick Production
The overall aim of the project is to contribute to development of building components for low carbon construction by presenting a blueprint for a complete fabrication system that enable researchers, architects, and builders to utilise new tools to experiment with novel earth construction approaches at incredibly low-cost, unprecedented speed and with minimal environmental impact.
This presentation will outline research focused on developing a new fabrication system to produce earth bricks via extrusion. The research includes the development of a low-cost extrusion machine constructed from basic of-the-shelf components. This aspect is combined with the development of a new design and production workflow that is based on use of low-cost 3D printers to produce the extrusion profiles (dies). The research has established specific geometries for the extrusion dies that are suitable for use with fibrous earth brick mixtures. Initial proof-of-concept experiments have focused on producing interlocking brick units that could facilitate very rapid construction of earth buildings.
More to follow from…
Maria Lisogorskaya
Maria Lisogorskaya is co-founding director of Assemble, the London-based Turner Prize-winning architecture and art studio. She has also been a lecturer at universities and art schools across the world.
Assemble Studio
Maria will talk about Atelier Luma, a circular-design lab workspace completed with biomaterials including sunflowers, salt and algae.
More details to follow.
Standard Admission just £120 + booking fee.
Concession* Tickets available. (*See ticket page for eligibility details)
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