2019 - supertecture gUG

NEWS 2019

> NEWS 2018

DECEMBER 29TH, 2019 - BEAUTIFUL BOTTLES

Vio and Manu have built their pioneer wall in the bottled bathroom of our nepalese community lodge.
Why don't you have a look yourself:

DECEMBER 23RD, 2019 - HOORAY KIPILI GIRLS

While we are celebrating christmas days, our five architects in Tansania have started to construct foundations for the arriving containers of our upcoming studio building at lake Tanganjika.

DECEMBER 11TH; 2019 - SUPER SUSTAINABLE MOUNTAIN ARCHITECTURE

Sustainable Mountain Architecture has visited supertecture's school + community lodge site in Nepal.

Thank you! We are looking forward to many nice collaborative projects in future!

DECEMBER 10TH, 2019 - SUPER GOETHE WORKSHOP

Thank you everybody for last weekend's first Goethe+supertecture workshop for alternative building materials in Nepal.
All pictures and experiences will be presented during the christmas party at the Goethe-Zentrum Kathmandu.
We were happy to welcome the sand-bag-house-engineers from Dream Structures Worldwide and four young architects from Khwopa Engineering College - KhEC of Bhaktapur.

DECEMBER 6TH, 2019 - CROWDFUNDING KIPILI STUDIO

Dear supertecture friends and supporters: At lake Tanganjika we are going to build Tanzania's first international student house in order to invite young professionals from east africa and all over the world to join our research architecture that will be both: highly social + environmentally friendly. A tiny self-made social architecture faculty in the heart of africa!

Between "Saint Nicholas" (Nikolaus) and christmas you are very much invited to empower our project financially:

www.startnext.com/kipili-studio

Our Tanzania team conceptualizing an international meeting point for young & international architects at lake Tanganjika - the supertecture studio kipili.

produced by Luisa Borowski

DECEMBER 3RD, 2019 - BRICK AWARD NOMINATION

We are proud to announce that supertecture's first "classhouse" is nominated among many other outstanding buildings for the 2020 brick award. This particular honor belongs to hundrets of Nepalese families who donated more than 14.000 different bricks after the recent eartquake - an unforgetable brick crowdfunding!

A special "THANK YOU" goes to young architect Elek and his masons who helped designing nearly 40 unique bondings from more than 50 different types of local brick. Find out more: https://www.brickaward.com/Nominations.html

NOVEMBER 29TH, 2019 - BLACK SOIL FRIDAY

Today on "black friday" we are celebrating a pretty black material for our community lodge: "black soil".
Whatch Flora and Mo getting prepared to ramm Nepal's first black soil walls on our fresh foundations and check out their superlovely black soil proto-tiles...

NOVEMBER 24TH, 2019 - FANTASTIC PLASTIC

The first ever built Nepalese plastic house is finally skyrocking!
Watch Leni's spectacular village-made plastic tiles and all their supernice colours...

NOVEMBER 22TH, 2019 - MOTHER EARTH

SuperSimone presents her latest handmade soil results and some beautiful pictures of her astonishing "earthship"...

NOVEMBER 3RD, 2019 - JAMBO KIPILI

Finally all five architects of our first supertecture team arrived at the beautiful lake Tanganjika in Tanzania...

NOVEMBER 1ST, 2019 - GOLDEN TIMES

Together with the most experienced farmers in our mountain village we designed and constructed a beautiful roof from rice-straw for our first soil house in Nepal. Some days ago team supertecture was invited to harvest straw them selves for the first time...

OCTOBER 30TH, 2019 - HAPPY BHAI TIKA 2076

Bhai Tika is the last and most spectacular day of Nepal's annual Tihar - the festival of lights.

This year our beautiful supertecture team in Dhoksan was asked to join these holy celebrations...

OCTOBER 3RD, 2019 - BUILDING NEPAL'S COMMUNITY LODGE

Get some impressions of our daily construction works in Dhoksan.

produced by Stefan Seifert

SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2019 - CROwD FUNDING THE LODGE VOL.2

Dearest friends and loyal supporters, we are pleased to invite you to the second phase of our lodge-crowd-funding:

www.startnext.com/nepal-community-lodge-vol2

SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2019 - NEW TEAM ARRIVED IN NEPAL

Welcome to the Himalaya mountains! Our next team has arrived in Nepal for the community lodge project.

We wish you a very pleasant stay and all the best for your lovely houses from recycled bottles and rammed black earth..

SEPTEMBER 9TH, 2019 - PROTOTYPE HOUSE SOVIM

Have a look on our latest progress in mozambique.. Together with the "green helmets" we started to produce the first local bricks our selfs and now already using them for our prototype tiny house.

SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2019 - BLACK EARTH AND GREEN BOTTLES

Team supertecture in Nepal is designing two new buildings for our first himalaya mountain community lodge:

1. a black and white bedroom from earth, charcoal and lime

2. a green panarama bath-room from 30.000 recycled glas bottles

SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2019 - SUPERTECTURE CAMP 2019

Thanks to all our new supertecture team mates for joining our wonderful project-planing camp in Regensburg. We wish you a very good time in the Himalaya mountains and at lake Tanganjika this winter!

AUGUST 14TH, 2019 - THE BOREDOM OF SLAMPING CLAY

produced by Stefan Seifert

AUGUST 14TH, 2019 - THE BIG TIMBER SLAP

produced by Stefan Seifert

AUGUST 14TH, 2019 - THE MEAN BRICK THIEF

produced by Stefan Seifert

AUGUST 14TH, 2019 - THE 7M² HOUSE

A short introduction to our storm-proofed prototype house for families and teachers who lost their homes during cyclone "Idai" in Mozambique.

produced by Stephanie Brandmeier

AUGUST 8TH, 2019 - CONSTRUCTION START IN MOZAMBIQUE

Supertecture and greenhelmets have finally arrived in mozambique to start building the 7m² prototype house. Please enjoy our emergency-architecture-student's short introduction to the foreseen tiny-house design here

Thank you for supporting our project: www.betterplace.org/de/projects/71662

JULI 29TH, 2019 - LET'S MAKE NEPAL CLEAN AGAIN

Team supertecture joined the municipality to pick two trucks of plastic from Banepa's dirty roads and rivers.

THANK YOU to all our hundred helpers for your "super-solidarity".

All the plastic has been transported to our social-hotel-construction-site in Dhoksan. In a next step we have washed all our precious plastic with the young and curious architects of Bhakthapur's reknown "Nepal Engineering College" in order to cook a nice and strong soup for the production of new plastic-tiles. Thank you very much team NEC!

JULY 17TH, 2019 - THE BEAUTY OF LAKE TANGANYIKA

Enjoying Tanzania's warm weather in our boat or in the shade of a coconut palm tree we are working on the last preparations for supertecture's construction start in octobre. Architects in paradise will keep you updated!

JULY 14TH, 2019 - SUPERTECTURE AND GREENHELMETS IN MOSAMBIQUE

Together with our friends from the "greenhelmets" we have been researching the destructions of cyclon "Idai" and most suitable places to start our reconstruction work. Meanwhile supertecture and the students from Augsburg's faculty of architecture have designed the small and smart 7m² home. In early august we will start building our first prototype tiny-house for teachers in the village of "Sovim".

Later on greenhelmets are going to rebuild the house many times for local families.

Here is your chance to support our project: www.betterplace.org/p71662

produced by Stephanie Brandmeier

JUNE 6TH, 2019 - FIRST SUPERTECTURE WORKSHOP AT THE BUILDING SITE

10 very curious young architects of Nepal's Engineering College in Bhaktapur were celebrating with us a very productive "cob-clay- training-day" in and around the earth-bedroom of our future community lodge in Dhoksan.

Dear students: Thank you for your outstanding motivation!
We hope you enjoyed to "apply your sciences" with us. Expecting to invite you to many more interesting architectural training-camps on our construction sites in future, we send you our warmest regards from all your new friends of team supertecture.

JUNE 4TH, 2019 - SUPER-LECTURE AT NEC

It was a great pleasure to visit the Nepal Engineering College and the awesome architecture students for our super-lecture!

Stay curious and always trust in the superpower of architecture. We are looking forward to our NEC-supertecture-cooperation for outstanding architecture in this beautiful country.

JUNE 1ST, 2019 - RECONSTRUCTION IN MOZAMBIQUE

During our visit in mozambique greenhelmets and supertecture decided to rebuild the totally destroyed primary school of "Sovim" village and some of the attached teacher houses. Storm and rain have destroyed all former school buildings in Sovim, so that students currently have to be teached in the shade of a tree.

Like the school of Sovim, 9 comparable other villages in the neighborhood are equally suffering from the destruction of their school buildings.

If we would come up with a suitable design for classrooms, teacher houses and family homes, it could be applied in many villages troughout the whole region. Thats why we are intensively working on ideas for some smart low cost building-prototypes with students from the faculty of architecture in Augsburg.

Good schools for a good education are very much needed: analphabetisation in the village's district "Búzi" is concerning two-thirds of the local population. Some classes of the primary school in Sovim count more than 80 students. By rebuilding teacher houses we will further conceptualize how to even enable new and resistant private homes for the 300 families of Sovim and neighboring villages later.

MAY 25TH, 2019 - MOMOPARTY

Welcome to our "thank-you-party" for all the generous crowd-funders.

produced by Stefan Seifert

MAY 17TH, 2019 - SUPERTECTURE IN MOZAMBIQUE

supertecture, greenhelmets and a representative of our students from the faculty of architecture in Augsburg are visiting the regions that have been most affected by wind and water from cyclone "Idai". Thousands of families in mozambique (considered to be among the world's less wealthy countries) have lost their homes in this heavy storm and it's following flood.

While searching a suitable community to start our reconstruction project we continue to plan and design a simple and affordable prototype house that can be build for many homeless victims of the storm.

MAY 3RD, 2019 - HOME FOR MOSAMBIQUE FAMILIES

Together with architecture students of the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg we are designing and building the first of many storm and flood proofed homes for mozambique's families in need. Support our work: www.betterplace.org/p7004

APRIL 2019 - NEPAL SCHOOL: THE WINDOW HOUSE

This building embodies a library as well a as a multi-purpose panoramic play and teaching room.

Designed by Philipp, Angi and Nadine the window house is a public adventure-playground that welcomes you even when school is closed and that kindly offers you a slide towards home as soon as school is over.
Please feel free to try it whenever you are in the mood of sliding (we are shure you all know this well-known desire...).

The building's structure is completely made from super strong "sal" hard wood. Sal is a rather expensive type of Nepalese wood but it is extremely resistant against weather and aggressive termites.
The sal tree's strength probably comes from its close relation to the history of the religious father of Buddhism: "Siddharta". It is said that his mother "Queen Maya" gave born to "Buddha" under a sal tree and that he later even came to death while lying under such a tree.

The skin of our sal house is entirely covered with over 700 windows that survived the collapsing buildings during the earthquake from 2015.

Even the roof is totally covered by old house's windows. They cause a chilly and well ventilated atmosphere in summer as well as they serve with solar profits and a certain warmth during winter.

APRIL 2019 - NEPAL SCHOOL: THE SCHOOL OF ROCK

Natural rock is a strong building material that always has been utilized in our himalaya mountain village.
Today people in Nepal prefere to use concrete and bricks troughout the entire country for their buildings but traditionally all houses in Dhoksan were constructed with earth and rock .
When we found rock and a lot of beautiful rocky roof slades in the ruins of so many collapsed buildings after the earthquake our supertecture engineer "Mick" decided to recycle his classroom from this left over materials.

For a very tall classroom we designed round windows which we would square on the inside for better handling, fabrication and maintenance.

A huge and strong net above the heads of teachers and students creates a second classroom floor and invites you to relax or play across every corner of the building. Our bamboo swing on the metall roof truss might be the student's perfect adventure for any break between one lesson and another.

APRIL 2019 - NEPAL SCHOOL: THE RAMMED EARTH HOUSE

The second of our four new school buildings in Nepal is made of differently reinforced local clay soil layers:

- cement, white cement, straw, (long) pine tree needles, cow shit.

Supertecture architect Tobi and engineer Vali have choosen the ancient Nepalese building material "clay" for their classroom in order to reinterpret a free, local and natural tradition that is not only environmental friendly but also highly attractive and causing a cozy athmosphere (due to the wall's memory capacity of temperature and humidity).

The mud-walls have been rammed in 5 different layers by utilizing reusable steel form work. In between each mud-layer we fixed a belt of prefabricated and reinforced concrete stones in order to secure our classroom against any eventual eartquake impact.

Even the floor of our mud-classroom is made from local earth that we rammed and finally covered with a bright and thin coat of white cement.

Our building's roof structure is made of local bamboo which we treated in the "bamboo treatment center" that we have been inaugrated earlier in the village: Old local bamboo (minimum age: 4-5 years) is deposed in a pool filled with borum salt water for one week. In a second step we treated our bamboo for 24 hours in a self made bamboo smoker to make it entirely resistant against any hungry termites.

Finally we covered the beautiful bamboo structure with straw from local rice to maintain a very vintage himalayan roofing method.

APRIL 2019 - NEPAL SCHOOL: THE BRICK HOUSE
Our brick class room is made of 14.000 individual donated "itas" from buildings that collapsed during Nepal's earthquake of the century.

Supertecture's star-architect "Elek" and our masonry guys on site designed more than 50 different brick bondings to show a fine selection of Nepal's unlimited brick-diversity.

To resist future earthquakes we equiped our brick house with traditional Nepalese seismic wood reinforcements: two "Sal"-wood belts in each wall are creating rigid building corners. The additional vertical bar is pressed to the inside of each class room corner in order to join different horizontal seismic belts in the walls.

Due to the generosity of all the people who supported this house with a donation of bricks, our class room is a true Nepale's monument of mercy. A special thanks goes to an unknown man from the town of "Thali". He absolutely wanted to donate a brick but he had none - so he donated 500 rupies. Dear mister "unknown": be sure your 500 rupies have been very well invested.

APRIL 2ND, 2019 - GRAND SCHOOL OPENING

supertecture and Patrizia Children Foundation proudly finished and inaugrated the himalaya school buildings in Dhoksan.

We want to heartly thank all our supporters and friends - especially the people and workers of Dhoksan and our wonderful team of young architects from Germany:

Elek, Tobi, Vali, Michi, Philipp, Nadine, Angi, Mattheo (Stefan), Schimolla (Simone), Leni, Paul, Dani, Annabella, Caro, Vronie, Lena, Stefan (2), Benny...

Dear children and teachers of the Shree Shila Devi School: we wish you a good start in your next academic year with many discoveries, joy, and comfort in your brand new adventure class rooms.

MARCH 19TH, 2019 - HANDOVER SECOND LODGE TEAM

A little sad but super-grateful we celebrate the departure of many friends who leave our Nepal lodge project after intensive months of passionate and creative work for our community. All our ovations and deepest gratitude belong to you!
You have truely become a memorable part of our mountain village and we hope to see you all again very soon!

At the meantime the work on our lodge is not on hold but instantly handed over very smooth and gentle to our next team of young architects and ingeneers: Vronie (Regensburg), Lena (Munich), Stefan, (Kaufbeuren), Benny (Augsburg) and Danai (Ioannina, Greece).

MARCH 17TH, 2019 - NEPAL LODGE: COB CLAY CONSTRUCTION

Simone's first impressions of our first upcoming sleeping room for the community lodge - entirely hand shaped from earth and straw.

FEBRUARY 25th, 2019 - NEPAL LODGE: FANTASTIC PLASTIC

Our supertecture plastic-pioneer "Leni" is researching and producing recycled plastic tiles for a uncompareable bathing experience in Nepal's one and only community lodge.

For the bathroom's facade and all inner surfaces Leni and local volunteers will collect more than two tonnes of plastic-trash from the surrounding environment - a huge contribution to the cleanliness of Nepal's breathtaking nature.