CONVERSATIONS IN COB

Conversations in Cob was a two week summer school that explored natural building methods to design a public space for Hackney. The two-week Summer School tested a possible approach to designing a 'community space' in Hackney. Formed through a series of workshops, the collaborative build was the result of conversations, local stories, and experimenting with natural materials sourced in Hackney - a 'Hackney Cob'.

YEAR: 2022
PROJECT TYPE: EDUCATION, MATERIALS
COLLABORATORS: STORE STORE, Rowland Keable, Seyi Adelekun, Meera Shakti-Osbourne, Ben Lee
TEAM: Alys Hargreaves, Ella Caldicott, Felix Sagar, James Hepper, Millicent Green, Negar Taatizadeh

The raw ingredients for making our Hackney Cob were sourced from waste materials (chalk, clay, silt and sand) extracted from below the construction site at Abney Park, where geothermal boreholes were being drilled in to the London bedrock to a depth of 110m.

Earthen artefacts & Hackney recipes were made on site with Abney’s clay, followed by a series of workshops and collaborations with a series of artists, architects, and earthen experts. From exploring the potential of the integration of modern technology with cob building with Ben Lee, to the experimenting of various applications of building with earth by the use of formworks - brick, block, and component making to scale up our cob building.