Chris Workshop 1

One day I came in a provider’s shop to buy a bunch of screws.
I came out with more than 1 ton of black stone tiles.
They had been ordered by an artisan who never bought them – I got a fair price.
I’m not ecologically ashamed that the tiles come from Vietnam : they did the travel before !
The clear tiles are made with my formula of « wood like » fiber-reinforced high performance concrete FRHPC with metakaolin. 
The sink legs are made of grey FRHPC
The wooden blinds are second hand.
The white kitchen cupboard is hacked Ikea + wheels.
The mains board for feeding 4 lights is equipped with C13 inlets.

The big drum is made with an 80 cm pipe from the village water network.
The grey drum on the left is also made with a water pipe.
The door with glasses comes from a telephone booth in a post office.
The stool under the chessboard has been recovered.
The curtains bars are all movable as well as the ceiling lamps.
The soil under the workshop has some humidity.
The oak floor is installed on a double joists with an electric air fan.

The Chaudanne project

The initial project was buildings 15 16 17.

The town planning rules forced us 1. to buy the whole land 2. to give a part of it for social buildings 3-8.

We had to pay for the roads and networks.

We could finance this and the Common house – 15 – by selling 6 plots of land – 1 & 2 ; 11-14.

The main senior architect was clever to make the « ensemble ».
He sub-contracted with a younger architect who is qualified for wood building.
The senior architect conceived the building 16, the younger the building 17 and the Common house 15.

Picture taken from the crane.

Chris’ Workshop 2

I had to learn how to draw with Sketchup.

Near our project their are several Blanchisseries – old laundry houses.

The vertical lines evoke the laundry houses structures.

The framework with Pascal the carpenter – son of Odile.

We made roman foundations + a 32 cm pozzolan mortar basement.

Straw bales for the walls and roof insulation.

The straw bales are covered with 6 cms of composite coating.

The composite formula :
– pure clay from a sand quarry
– marble powder
– metakaolin – burned clay used for FRHPC
– drêche = fruit juice making leftover

Mixing the composite.

The idea is not to have lime so that people don’t need to have rubber gloves and boots.

Each and every thing that has been made for the workshop is documented in 28 Internet sites.

With many, many pictures.

The whole project

100 pictures of the building phases.