According to our idea, the walls should me made out mostly of poo but should be able to survive moving the wall as whole. It needs a frame. We build small scale model of the walls frame, that we would fill up with cow dung mixture.

Here we used mix of cow dung with saw dust (5:2) and water. And tried to compress it as much as possible.

If it ever dries out we will notify you about results 😀

ah… Green grass, sun, birds flying around, gluhwein, a lot of people a lot of new ideas. That’s what comes into my mind when i think about Landen 2011. It was really inspiring experience. Once again, even though the weather was horrible for weeks, right on time for Landen it became sunny and warm. Perfect conditions for an outdoor eco festival. Of course we were present there with our latest development.

This year we decided to convince poeple visiting festival to make poo-paper themselves instead of us showing how we do it. It worked out pretty well and people realised that it isn’t quantum physics and everyone could do that. Especially kids had a lot of fun making ‘shit paper’. Apart from paper we wanted to explore and try out more things one could do with poo. To protect ourselves from wind and cold we plastered the walls with PooPlaster mixture (cow dung mixed with sand 2:1 and water). The effect was pretty awesome and we realised that Poo is in fact a great and cheap (if not free) building material. This inspired us to focus more in that direction and develop new factory where cow dung would be the main building source.

We also got a lot of feedback this year. Thank you all for that. We really needed that to motivate us to work harder on the project. You guys planted a lot of ideas in our head, and since the festival it seems that PooProject is the main thing we are occupied with.

here are some more pictures of us moving the house to the terrain and some new products we developed for the festival:

June 2011. We had lots of fun making paper with the girls and boys from Kunstclub Nieuw en Meer –

A week later, they used natural inks to draw primitivist art on the sheets of paper they made.

Autumn 2010, Landen eco-festival kick-off and the factory has moved to a field in the park.

In this festival location visitors were able to see and experience the paper making process in all its stages , we intoduced the bio gas instalation and freshly made on spot poo bricks.

All in all it was a succesful event with a lot of intersting projects, great atmosphere and many enthusiastic visitors.

The factory will be standing on its festival ground again next year and we hope to be able to present further results (and this time make some more pictures of the happening..).

www.nieuwenmeer.nl/landen+2010
landen2010.blogspot.com

Stage 1 – The Orange Factory

We started working with only a roof above our head, the poo box for drying the dung we have collected, a big bath to make the paper in and a dipper bath for washing the dung. We also made a very nice press but that turned out to be not very useful for the paper making process. Maybe at later point we will be able to use it for stencil printing.. The dung was cooked in an open fire just next to the factory.

Stage 2 – The Scrap Wood Factory

Time has come to build a more stable housing around us. So off we went to look for scrap wood and abandoned building materials…

…and build…

And back to work.

Stage 3 – Summer is Over

Getting ready for colder work conditions, better storage capabilities and the upcoming Landen Festival, it is time to close up our shed.

Stage 4 – Landen Festival

The Challenge of Moving the House as a whole and the final paint job.

Stage 5 – Dung Bricks and Plasterwork

Our next move will be to produce enough bricks and dung plaster to rebuild the factory as originally planned. Keep updated.

The search for the right mixture of cow dung, dirt and water in order to create a simple brick has began.

The first attempt with equal masses proved a failure..

Second mixture had 3 times the ammount of dirt, which seemed a bit too sandy- so for the following mixtures we added more cow dung, and then again more cow dung. The large form (flower pot) is the first brick made and the most sandy one, the cube form is the last one made and the moistest one.

Only thing left to do, is to wait for it all to dry. Soon an update with the resaults.

3rd July – …and we have a BRICK!

After letting our experimental metarial dry for over a week we present you first resaults:

The Bricks suprisingly look strong and solid. First two, where mixture of material was more of dirt then cow dung apear more sandy then the last one where we used more cow dung. Therefore, we go for 3rd option and scale it up to a size of real brick. Next challenge is to produce engough bricks to builid small shed (where we are planning to store more cow-dung for paper factory). In this way we’ll see if the bricks are strong enough to held roof and serve it’s purpose as wall.