“…. every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in.
A water-carrier picks the empty pot.
A carpenter stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill.
Their hope, though, is for emptiness, ….
.… it contains what you need! “

Dschalal ad-Din ar-Rumi 1207 – 1273

FIRST SEMINAR
Analysis and design planning for a new Goethe Institut in Aswan, Egypt

SECOND SEMINAR
Detailed planning, workshop and exhibition “Clay – a new tradition”

The planning task was to design a branch office in Aswan for the Egyptian Goethe Institut in Cairo
These institutes are represented worldwide and serve as places for encounter, dialogue and understanding in their host country.
The task requires both the exploration of another culture and the extraordinary characteristics of the local and traditional building materials.
The presented sketches showed by a sensitive handling of the material language the ways and possibilities of a sophisticated, modern, contemporary architecture.

In the second seminar the workshop “clay building in detail” took place. Over 1,500 clay bricks were produced, dried and installed in various wall models on the scale of 1:1. Sample walls in different international clay construction techniques such as rammed earth, loam wraps, loam formations showed the manifold use of this building material, which had been used in Europe for a long time too.
Seminar, design project and workshop during the teaching post at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany (D. Karcher)

Collaboration partners
Goethe-Institut Munich, Germany
Dachverband Lehm e.V. Weimar, Germany
Claytec AG, Viersen-Boisheim, Germany
clayexpert Rodrich Seefried, Germany

Sponsors
Fire brigade of the city of Munich, Germany
Maier Bauunternehmen GmbH, Munich, Germany
Claytec AG, Viersen-Boisheim, Germany