Past editions

Building houses in Adobe

2004-11-05T18:52:36+00:00

The earthquakes of January and February 2001 destroyed thousands of homes in the small nation of El Salvador . There have been strong discussions concerning the appropriate technologies and materials for quake-resistant building and people are insecure. In two villages of the municipality of Tamanique , 30 families have taken the initiative and are building their houses with an ancient technology. However, they are using today's knowledge to make sure that their houses won´t fall apart during the next earthquake.

Fenavip in Colombia Impacts in housing

2004-11-05T18:58:03+00:00

Jorge Acevedo

During the past decade Fenavip in Colombia has built more than 13,000 houses and keeps up a daily production of 2,500 micro concrete tiles (MCR), which are done by women at a average of 300 tiles a day.

These are results of a collaboration that began in 1995 when a Fenavip delegation visited CECAT in Cuba and hosted a course on alternative technologies, and CECAT got to know about the construction program Columbia 21th Century.

As a result of this visit a Cuban delegation composed of three professionals from CECAT and one from CIDEM, elaborated a feasibility study about production of alternative materials in Bogotá. Fenavip then invested in tevi equipment to produce MCR. Tile production began in 1997 and shortly afterwards the first houses in the neighborhood of La Esperanza in Bosa were fully covered with MCR. Since then Fenavip has built more than 13,000 houses in different regions of Colombia, some of which are presented below.

Urb. Santa Marta, Líbano 2000 Houses: 678 Basic unit: 36 m2 House price: $12'000.000 Project total: $8.136'000.000 Year: 2000-2002
Bogotá La Esperanza , Bosa Houses: 1 720 Basic Unit: 42 m2 House price: $2'500.000 Project total: $21'500.000.00 Year: 1997- 2002
Fontanar del Río, Suba Houses: 616 Basic unit: 32 m2 House price: $16.800.000 Project total: $10'348.000.000 Year: 1998-2002
Hogar del Sol, Soacha Houses: 751 Basic unit: 42 m2 House price: $18'000.000 Project total: $13.518'.000.000 Year: 1999-2002
Llanitos de Gualará, Calarcá Houses: 1051 Basic unit Relocation: 44.6 m2 Rent: 24.15 m2 House price Relocation: 12'039.000 Rent: 9'900.00 Total project: 11.174'940.00 Year: 2000-2001
Balcones de la Villa, Calarcá Houses: 505 Basic unit: 27.5 m2 House price: $9'900.00 Project total: $4.999'500.00 Year: 2001
Ciudadela Simón Bolívar, Armenia Houses: 1.030 Basic unit: 26.55 m2 House price: $9'900.00 Project total: $10.197'000.000 Year: 2001
Barranqulla, Prado Soledad Houses: 1.150 Basic unit:72 m2 House price: $10'500.00 Project total: $12.75'000.000 Year: 1999-2001

New services in ECOSouth portal

2004-11-05T18:59:10+00:00

In order to increase the information potential in the ECOSouth Website, new services and sections have been added for our users on-line. One of the new sections is our FAQs. In the past month it has been the most visited section in our portal. In this section, answers to the most frequenlty asqued questions have been posted: about MCR tiles, CP40, and products and services in general. Also, a section of "Events" has been uploaded where new events like seminars and conferences from the EcoSouth network will be posted. Besides, you can post an event you think may be relevant to the Network's activities and themes. Our editiorial team will check your post and publish it.These new services and sections are implemented as a response to the many questions and contributions of the users of our portal.

Academic upgrading at Clay House Project

2004-11-05T19:01:05+00:00

At a recent six-week course for Clay House Project staff in Orwetoveni, nine men and women, average age thirty, got together each morning with senior volunteer Wolfgang Christian from Offenbach, Germany, to learn more mathematics, geometry and history. Everyone worked hard to catch up on past educational deficiencies. At the end of the course I was impressed by the good learning capacity and curiosity of the students, said Dr. Christian, a retired school teacher

Orlando Espinosa enroute through Switzerland

2004-11-05T19:02:00+00:00

On his way to Cuba from Mozambique, key multi-lingual workshop consultant, Orlando Espinosa from Cecat, took advantage of the stopover at Grupo Sofonias contact office in Switzerland. Recently EcoSouth has been searching through old documents to digitalize information about MCR workshops in Latin America, a Herculean task, and Orlando´s inputs helped sort out some questions. This research will be extended to include workshops on other continents.

Plastering to combat illness connecting science and practice

2004-11-05T19:04:12+00:00

One of the key assignments from the second EcoMaterials conference three years ago was to investigate and document the technologies and materials to cover earth walls. This is an art known by thousands of bricklayers masons around the world, but almost unknown by thescientific technicians, evidenced by a completel complete lack of scientific information on this theme. Lecturers and students in Guatemala and Ecuador are presenting the first results about their investigation of this theme.

Building Without Borders

2004-11-05T19:06:44+00:00

In cities and countries around the world, billions of people live in slums and shanty towns, doomed by ongoing poverty to grossly inadequate shelter. Solving the global housing crisis has become one of the most urgent imperatives of our time, but doing so without creating problems of ecological degradation and lack of empowerment is a major challenge.