The building of the house began on Monday and is expected to be over today. Te campaign includes engineers, architects, environment engineers, geologists and one construction worker. Since the beginning of the week, under the supervision of Prof. Gernot Minke from Kassel University, Germany, they are all building a small, 16m² house, in the village of Kolibi at the northern parts of Crete.  

Every wall of the house is built through different technology using natural materials and soil. “The house is a form of a contemporary bio-air-conditioned home built with materials generously provided by nature. We have it as our goal, through the building of this house, to launch a series of similar constructions, thus opposing the excessive use of cement”, says Ms Francheskaki, one of the project participants. “We are 16 people working here, but we have daily visitors. We have decided to employ a variety of methods, so that we have the opportunity to make a comparison between them and see how they would react to the surrounding climate.”

“Our most serious problem is that the soil in the area is not of the best quality”, says Prof. Minke. It needs seeding, since there are a lot of tiny pebbles inside, which is quite time consuming. Otherwise, everything is going well.”

The small piece of land in the village of Kolibi has been transformed into a building site- some do the soil seeding, others mix it with the straw, and still others are building. “We chose to use clay because it is a natural material, it’s ecological, and easy to work with”, adds eng. Eleni Braudaki. “It can also be used for more and larger constructions, replacing to some extend the use of cement. In other countries building with clay is perfectly normal. In Germany, for example, during the last years a lot of houses are made of clay. All in all, it’s nothing new. This tradition dates long back in the past, both in Crete and in the rest of Greece, but has been left aside since concrete appeared- an energy wasting and harmful for the environment material.