Eco in Denmark: Another album

Here is another album from ecovillage "Fri og Fro" in Odsherred, uploaded by Mette Petersen (www.okoliv.dk) living in this ecovillage. Pictures of the homes. Added to the pictures are nice descriptions (in danish) of the building material:

Eco in Denmark: Support concert for Pakistan

Yesterday, the ecovillage Friland arranged a support concert for the flood victims of Pakistan, and the previously mentioned housebuilding-project where my previous host flying to Pakistan this week are already starting to teach new building instructors in the area on how to build with the delivered material. The support concert collected a lot of money, by having volunteers working and musicians playing. I participated making ecological drinks in the bar which we sold, and played a few of my compositions on the piano. The other musicians were a singing duo with folk songs, a violin player, an irish flute player and a drum player. There was singing, dancing and lots of pakistani food made by my prev host and his father. Alittle taste of another world, and we came closer to their reality by seeing how wonderful their food and music culture really is. Seeing the dresses hanging on the wall, made me sence there should be persons wearing them..

selling fabrics and tickets

I'm making a smaller installation for SupportPakistan

At the moment I got a happy task from Caroline at Engineers Without Borders, which makes me feel I can contribute on a minor scale for a major project. It is to make a small installation in the same dimensions as the bigger houses, to be shown in TV and on stands. And if I had the money, I'd travel down to Pakistan immediately and help them out! They are planning to set up some hundred thousands of this straw bale house below, to shelter people in the cold mountains during the winter. This installation by the way, is making its way to danish tv-stations very soon to be presented, and it is to show the people donating money where their money goes. I think many people like this project, because it is so specific and practical. I am happy that they are getting more publicity to collect more money for this important project of theirs.

Eco in Denmark: Brushing some lime plaster on walls

In the first few days here at Friland, I started as mentioned with whitewashing (or not clearly), more specifically mixing and painting with lime plaster on the external walls at my host. It was both a lesson in building stairs to reach the upper levels of the wall as well as climbing them, and of course this very simple technique. The cal is calcium carbonate, which is a chemical form of calcium hydroxide and sand, where water is added 4 times 1 to make the plaster slake. The result after brushing is below:

House's wall before lime plaster



Voila! A completely white, bright house!:)

Eco in Denmark: Straw bale houses earth quake resistant

My host in ecovillage "Friland", Caroline Meyer White at Engineers Without Borders in Denmark, is currently working on a specific building project in Pakistan after the flood. She and the engineers are building earth quake friendly straw bale houses with the right technique, to shelter the homeless during the cold winter to arrive! This is for the northern parts of Pakistan, where simple tents won't be enough. And here we also learned something new about straw bale houses: When constructed as explained in the link below, they are tested as earth quake resistant! This way, their new houses will not only shelter them, but also keep them more safe in the years to come, and.. it will be much cheaper to build and easier and faster to build as the locals are brought in who already know much of such building and local material is being used.

NEW INPUT: Straw and compressed straw as one of many natural materials, is different to metal/ bricks and compact material, as straw "breathes" and makes holes and space for the air to flow within its structure, so when the ground shakes the material itself "shakes" in circles with airflow and is more unlikely to collapse than a four-edge, thick wall-structure with no natural "airflow".

From abstract: "The objective of the shake table tests was to assess the seismic response of a 14’ x 14’ x 10’ full-scale house constructed with heavy detailing. The input motion was the Canoga Park Topanga Canyon record of the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, Mw 6.7. The house was subjected to eight levels of seismic shaking, beginning at 25% of the recorded ground acceleration and increasing at 25% increments. The house survived 0.82g, twice the acceleration of the Canoga Park record. Although severely damaged, the building did not appear in danger of collapse, even at the end of the test sequence."

(Video of shake-table test below, requires Flash):

More information here: http://nees.unr.edu/projects/straw_bale_house.html

And at PAKSBAB: http://www.paksbab.org/

Donation-site (danish): SUPPORTPAKISTAN.DK

Eco in Denmark: Odsherred.

Arriving in Odsherred on August 1-9, there was a little village in the middle of the yellow fields. 16 families with children live here, the ecovillage established at a parking lot where the public road ends. In Denmark it is not called "ecovillages", though rather eco society. This is because ecovillages do not only appear in the middle of yellow fields, but also nearby the towns. Because they are so integrated as local contributors, that they are not separated from the average citizen and not seen as anything "exotic". 


Welcoming me at the community, were two parents who were architects from Copenhagen and little girl. Sun was shining, and the garden smiling at my willing hands to take a big deep dig into its soil. Like a village, these houses do have quite big gardens. The biggest investment they probably had to make, was acres of space and field to build their sustainable home. The rest of the upwards - and widely constructed area, costed them the minimum of money.

To understand how cheap it is to build this home and how much they gain from its sustainability, to create yet more freedom and yet more flexible activities in everyday life, one has to know its ground philosophy and ground fundament which I'll try to explain through some of these blog posts. This is not something new in Denmark. In fact, Norway where I come from, is estimated 15 years behind - both in the infrastructure and development of societies like this. 

But the interesing part, is that all industrial countries seem to move towards ecological balance as a result of consumer needs and consumer's deadly health from functional lifestyle, so therefor Denmark and Germany are frontiers of life style whereas countries like Norway do have a lot of peace development across borders and energy research. The sad thing, is that we seem to group ourselves as "they do this" and "we do that" , instead of looking at the society as one building and developing board where we need the eco balance as the pre-fabricated lifestyle seem not so much in balance at all. I'd avoid saying commercial lifestyle, as ecological lifestyle can be super commercial when given a chance, like we have proves in Denmark. So there is no separation between earning and slow consumption here.  

In fact, slow consumption and models given thoughts to profit the society and planet just as much as yourself, seem to be the winning gain in the end. And this we must not forget; our future and now is dependant on each other both ways. So if you want a good now, look at coming aspects so that you can relax. Knowing that your future will be a good one is surprisingly healthy for stress and concentration it seems here at the ecovillage. And the only "stressful" thing you really need to worry about, is to dedicate time for creativity and social meetings to develope the common ground where your house lives. 

Yes, lives. The house lives. And by building breathing straw bale houses, external air conditioning is a no buy and no use. The more natural material, the more they figure out how the elements work with each other to get all the resources we normally just copy from nature in the other synthetic way anyway.