The Experience of Two Workshops on CSEB Attended by MSA University Team at Auroville Earth Institute and MSA Center of Earth

Building with compressed stabilized earth bricks (CSEB) is considered one of the most low cost environmentally-friendly technologies. The future potentialities of the material and building technique in reducing the use of fired bricks and concrete in Egypt are very strong, especially when the bricks are produced using sandy soil, available all over the country. In order to promote the awareness of this technology, many institutions around the world conduct training workshops. This paper aims at comparing between the intensive hands-on training workshops on the production and masonry of CSEB attended by MSA University students at Auroville Earth Institute (Auroville, India) and MSA Center of Earth (6th of October, Egypt). The comparison covers the following points: 1) workshop program, 2) soil identification and sensitive field tests, 2) press machine model, 3) shapes of produced bricks, 4) production process from preparing mixtures to stacking, and 5) masonry. Besides the gathered observations and comments, 6) a questionnaire consisting of these points was developed and handed to the team that attended the two workshops. According to the trainees’ observations and questionnaire results, differences in languages and accents were significant issues in understanding explanations and instructions, less theoretical content and in-situ lectures was preferable to all and the large number of trainees results in lack of tools. Based on their experience, manually sieving and mixing the ingredients was easy but using a hydraulic press machine to manufacture CSEB was faster and less labor-intensive. In addition, stacking the units on pallets near the machine made the brick less likely to damage. Using quality control tools such as a penetrometer and calliper was essential for producing good bricks. Producing bricks with various shapes and colors was more interesting and athletically appealing to them. As for the masonry training, although using real bricks was slower and more complicated, it was useful for acquiring practical experience. Finally, the social dimension, such as making new friends, was as important as the other advantages of the workshops.

Department

Architecture

Publisher

American Institute of Science (Public Science Framework) + EKB

Sponsor

MSA University

Copyright

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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