‘Good places are never bought off the shelf, but arise in an inclusive process built on local ideas, imagination and aspiration’(00:/, 2011, p.181)

Since October last year Cave has started a fantastic collaboration with The Glass-House, community led design. Vera has started the AHRC funded collaborative PhD at the University of Sheffield. 3 years of research will look into the merits of community participation not only for the community, but also look at the benefits for the built environment professionals engaged with citizen participation.

It will examine how ‘social capital’, can be regenerated and captured to assist in developing systems for participatory action and more inclusive and representative ways of neighbourhood regeneration, creating more sustainable spaces and places for an increasingly fluid contemporary society. It will also look at the value of this ‘social capital’, what kind of economic benefits that it can bring and for who.

After this initial 4 months we hope to keep you up to date with some of our findings along the way. So watch this space for reviews, events and interesting things that we’d like to share with you.

If you have any ideas please get in touch with us, we’d love to hear your thoughts in Community Led Design. We also will keep you up to date via our twitter account @cavecoop.

00:/, NESTA, CABE, Compendium for a civic economy London: 00:/, 2011

AHRC http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx

The Glass-House http://www.theglasshouse.org.uk/

Sheffield School of Architecture http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/architecture/study/pgschool/current_phd

B:D+R http://www.bdr.group.shef.ac.uk/

Cave has a new member!

We’ve been so busy in the Cave office lately that we’ve not had time to write a blog! But as you can see, we now have a fantastic new addition to the Cave team, so we can get back to our blog writing! Her name is Mariona Oliver and she is a Spanish Architect from Barcelona.

In Mariona’s own words: “I met Liz when we were both studying at the University of North London and since then I’ve had in mind that I would love to work with Liz. A few years later I met Vera Hale through Liz and thought I would like to work with Cave even more!

I feel that Cave has the features I look for in my place of work: a strong focus on sustainability, social concerns and a cooperative way of working. I am very happy to have joined this great team”.

All of us in the Cave team would like to wish Mariona a very warm welcome and we’re looking forward to more Cave expansion and all the fun we’re going to have working together!

The application was quite a tricky one with 11 overlapping pieces of legislation on the site! The site is a nature reserve and has 3 protected species; the Common Pipistrelle Bat, The European Water Vole and the House Sparrow. An important part of our application was how we were going to improve the existing habitat and biodiversity on the site. To this end a new hedge will be being planted this October as well as many native flowering and fruiting species of flowers, shrubs and trees. If you’re interested in plant lists then please drop us an email or call and we can forward the info on to you.

Sustainability was a key feature of the success of our application and with many of the pieces of equipment being built from reclaimed or recycled timber as well as coppiced timber. The play equipment itself will be organic in its design and will allow for a variety of experiences around the site. There’ll be a zip slide, a long wide slide with tree canopy platforms and crawl spaces, a round about, basket and cradle swings for multiple occupancy!, a sunken trampoline, a water play area and a sensory den. All of these pieces of equipment will be bespoke items built specifically for Yorda’s clients and designed to create an exciting, outdoor play experience that is challenging and stimulating as well as calming and beautiful.

The first two pieces of equipment going in this year will be a sunken trampoline and the sensory den. Due to funding finding the building work will be phased and will happen as and when funding is found. On that note! If you or your company would like to be amazing enough to fund a piece of Yorda play equipment, or even a little donation to the cause then please click here and please accept Caves and Yorda’s warmest Thank yous!

There are also lots of groovy ways you can support Yorda, they have a fantastic monthly ‘The More, The Monier’ cash lottery starting in September, they will be having one of their famous quiz nights in November (details to be up soon on their website) or you could do your own imaginative sponsored event (forms can be downloaded from their website).

We’ll keep you posted as pieces of equipment go in, so watch this space!

These bricks were made using a 1:1:1 mix of sand, straw and clay with 1/4 bucket of water depending of wetness of sand and how hot it was. We have quite silty clay on our site so we do not mix too much sand in as it would make the bricks too friable, (which is when the surface is really grainy and sandy to touch with lots of surface coming away when you rub it). Once you’ve mixed the cob, by foot in our case on tarps, the cob mix can then be firmly packed into the brick forms which need a good hosing down with water first otherwise you will never get your bricks out or off the board!

Once out of the forms they can be left to dry in a shady spot (in the barn in our case) with plenty of ventilation. The bricks are then turned every day and eventually stacked ready for use. We leave our bricks for a minimum of three weeks to three months depending on weather and ventilation. Our new bricks won’t get used until next year now so will be totally dried out by the time we come to put them in a wall. With restoration the reason you can’t use wet bricks is that the wall you are putting them into is dry, so if you put in wet bricks they will dry in the wall, which will mean any shrinkage or cracking will occur in the wall. So in order to have the right size brick that you know isn’t going to break you need to wait for them to dry outside the wall first. No doubt that’s all as clear as mud?!

We also have a new wall plate coming to replace the one we currently have which is rotten in the middle. The photo you can see top left, shows how the ceiling joists have been propped, then holes cut through the cob under the main ‘A frame’ timbers and blocks and wedges hammered in and then with these timbers supported the rest of the cob has now been taken out. A new wall plate can then be found and cut to fit the existing timber frame roof, the old wall plate taken out, the new one put in and then we can brick up the cob underneath with some of our fantastically made new cob bricks.

This year will also see the new drainage and sceptic tank going in, the holes for the sceptic tank and new filter bed will also generate lots of new clay for us, saving us loads of time, as many a day has been lost ‘in the pit’ digging up clay. Although it has to be said, that digging in the now enormous pit is strangely a very popular activity!

This year we also took off the last remaining bits of concrete in the flint plinth with one small stretch left now to rebuild and re-point, phew! It’s quite a healing process smashing concrete off of beautiful buildings, I highly recommend it! We also filled in the last remaining cob holes in the gable end wall leaving it ready to be Lime rendered next year.

Next year at LPG will see some new drainage, the flint plinth finished, the gable end wall rendered, the brick wall re built and tied back to the cob and the last remaining concrete window removed and all the new timber doors and windows fitted, quite an exciting year next year, can’t wait!

Thanks again from the Cavey team to all those that came out, made bricks, fixed walls, smashed concrete and ate their weight in cheese! You are all stars!

Well it’s coming to the end of Co-operatives fortnight and Cave has been co-operating with all sorts of fantastic people over the last two and a half years. We love being a co-op and all that that entails, the more we find out about co-ops the more excited and proud we are to be one and be a member of one.

Cave will be co-operating again this weekend with Transition Town Kingston (TTK) and the Kingston Environment Centre for their ‘Skills In Action weekend!’ Running from Sat 9th and Sun 10th July, 11am-5pm, at the Kingston Environment Centre, Fairfield East, KT1 2PT. Cave and some friends will be building a habitat wall on the Saturday, so come along and help us make a luxury apartment block for insects. Cave not only co-operates with humans but with insects too!

Co-operatives Fortnight is the annual campaign from the UK co-operative sector. It aims to raise awareness of how co-operatives offer a way of doing business in which everyday employees, customers and residents have an equal say in decisions and share the profits. This year, the theme ‘Yours To Share’ represents the shared ownership and the share in profits that makes co-operatives different.

Sponsored by key businesses in the co-operative sector and co-ordinated by Co-operatives UK, the national trade association for co-operatives, Co-operatives Fortnight ran for the first time in 2010. In its first year, over 160 events were held, 70,000 people got involved online, 2.3 million people were engaged overall and 43 million people heard about it from the media.

At the centre of this is a petition calling for government action to narrow the gap between rich and poor in the UK. To sign the petition click here.

For more co-ops info go to:

http://www.uk.coop/

For a sweet little film about co-ops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd5Be3zX7qM&feature=player_embedded

Come to the Kingston Environment Centre  on Tuesday, June 28th between 4pm -7pm, for this month’s free Eco-Surgery!

If you have questions about how to save money on your fuel bills?

How to make your home as energy efficient as possible for the least amount of money, in the most beautiful way?

What sort of grants and funding are available? Or how to encourage wildlife into your garden?

Then come down to the Eco-Surgery at the Kingston Environment Centre. No appointment is necessary, just pop in and we’ll do our best to answer all your questions and if we don’t know the answer we’ll find out, or find someone who does!

The Eco-Surgery is the last Tuesday of every month and is totally free, so come down and let’s talk sustainability!

Find us at:

Kingston Environment Centre, Fairfield East, Kingston, Surrey, KT1 2PT.

Tel: 0208 549 2698

www.kingstoneco.org.uk

The Cave team were back out at Camp Cob this May with lots of new helpers!

This visit we were focusing on new foundations to the fantastic new Oak door frame (not a nail or screw in site!), using some of our beautiful cob bricks made last year to plug up some of the more industrious masonry bees holes and starting on the final section of Flint wall to be re-pointed. One of our camp cobbers also made a fantastic Rhubarb compote with the vast amounts of Rhubarb we have on site!

We had the surreal pleasure of turning on our first light at Camp Cob which for the last two years has been a completely off grid, candle light and lantern experience! With our new found electrical capacity the client splashed out on a fridge, so cold beers all round at the end of the day, perfect!

We had ideal weather this trip for working outdoors and had loads of fun making cob mortars, hefting huge lumps of rocks about (thank you team “we move any rock!”) and playing with Lime. The flint re-pointing is under way and will be finished next trip as well as all the cob work to the end gable wall ready for Lime rendering next season.

If you’d like to come along to Camp Cob and have fun in France with mud and Lime then please feel free to email us about our July trip! There are a limited amount of places left and we will be there from July 16th – 31st, accommodation, food and drink are free, you just need to make your own way there… So come and sample the best of the French countryside whilst stamping around on lots of mud!

Come to the Kingston Environment Centre  on Tuesday 31st May between 4pm -7pm, for this month’s free Eco-Surgery!

If you have questions about how to save money on your fuel bills?

How to make your home as energy efficient as possible for the least amount of money?

What sort of grants and funding are available?

How to encourage wildlife into your garden?

Then come down to the Eco-Surgery at the Kingston Environment Centre, no appointment is necessary, just pop in and we’ll do our best to answer all your questions and if we don’t know the answer we’ll find someone who does!

The Eco-Surgery is the last Tuesday of every month and is totally free, so come down and let’s talk sustainability!

Find us at:

Kingston Environment Centre, Fairfield East, Kingston, Surrey, KT1 2PT.

Tel: 0208 549 2698

www.kingstoneco.org.uk

After winning the Peoples Millions earlier this year, the Harmony Gardens in Tottenham are now on site and under construction all using the power of community volunteers!

Thanks to the hard work of the fantastic people at Back2Earth, this project is soon to be a beautiful reality. Consisting of two separate gardens; one food producing children’s nature garden and one community growing and recreational garden.

If you’re in the North London area and fancy lending a hand then back2earth would love to hear from you, all ages and abilities welcome!

For info contact:

Martin Burrows or Felix Waterhouse at:

Back 2 Earth Projects, Broadwater Farm Community Centre, 1 Adams Road, Tottenham, N17 6HE.

tel: 020 8808 1829 or 020 8885 4185 or! 07831219032

www.back2earth.flinthosts.co.uk

NEXT ECO-SURGERY 31st MAY, 4pm – 7pm AT THE KINGSTON ENVIRONMENT CENTRE, Fairfiled East, Kingston, Surrey, KT1 2PT.

Just turn up and we’ll talk eco improvements!

www.kingstoneco.org.uk

Recently Cave teamed up with the charity The Glass-House to help them with a tour of sustainable community buildings, for a collection of diverse community groups who were interested in starting similar projects themselves.

First stop was The London Wildlife Trusts, Centre for Wildlife Gardening in Peckham.

Built in 1992 the centre is an award winning project by local designers Architype Architects. The building was the first to use recycled newspaper insulation in a breathable construction. The building is orientated to have maximum passive solar gain in autumn, winter and spring and natural ventilation and solar shading in the summer. Non toxic paints were use throughout the internal and external areas of the project. The Contract Value at the time was £56.000, so in today’s money that would be something around the £90.000. This building gets very hot during the summer, so some additional shading and ventilation is needed to the South elevation, but the building is well designed in terms of it’s function and aesthetics, just needs a little tweaking! The gardens here are fantastic and are well worth a visit…

Next stop was The Roots and Shoots building in Kennington, designed by Paul Noltey. The eco-building was completed in 2005 and officially opened in 2007 by HRH The Prince of Wales, it is the hub of Roots and Shoots’ activities. It’s a timber clad building with a large photovoltaic roof which generates around 50% of their electricity needs, it has solar water heating, rainwater collection for the WC’s and to water plants and in the cladding there are built-in insect and bird boxes. It’s where the training rooms, office and reception are housed and has a light and spacious hall and meeting rooms. The occupants of this building are really happy with the amount of usable space they now have, making their facility a real asset to the Charity, but feel more consultation during the design process was needed, which could have designed out some ongoing maintenance issues which they now have.

And finally, we took our little tour bus to the Manor Park Cafe in Sutton.

The café completed last year, boasts an impressive array of environmental features and was built by the UK’s leading straw bale design company Amazonails following a proposal from Sutton Council. The construction is of rammed car tyre foundations, UK produced load bearing straw bale walls, external Lime and Hemp render, internal Lime plaster, Oak timber framing, and a living roof. The building construction took just three months to complete. This little building is a fantastic example of how well straw insulates, but it does suffer from over heating! This could have been designed out at an early stage except that the architect that originally received the planning approval hadn’t designed for straw or for passive solar heating and cooling, this coupled with time constraints meant that adjustments to the approved designs couldn’t be made so Amazonails had to sustainably build a building that hadn’t been designed to be sustainable! With some external shading to the South this building will be toasty in the winter and cool in the summer.

All three buildings have their successes and failures, but all show what can be accomplished within the community if you put your mind to it. It was a really interesting day out and we met some lovely people, all with fantastic ideas and projects that if they come to fruition will be a real benefit to their communities, so good luck people!

Visit at:

www.wildlondon.org.uk

www.rootsandshoots.org.uk

www.amazonails.org.uk

www.theglasshouse.org.uk