Sustainable Construction

Sustainable construction means developing local building techniques and using local resources such as clay, wood and stone instead of imported steel and cement. Cement is doubly harmful to the climate because the CO2 released from the lime stone during the kiln firing process with fossil fuels.

Lime is different: it can be burned using renewable wood and it absorbs CO2 from the air as it hardens. Unlike cement, this diffusion-open binding agent is suitable for use in combination with traditional clay construction. Historic buildings from the colonial era before 1900 with clay brick masonry and lime plaster are still standing today, even though these cultural assets are now threatened with decay due to a lack of maintenance.

There is a lot to know about different types of quicklime and how to use it for differet buildings materials like mortar, plaster, adobe bricks and paint. Cement cannot simply be replaced by lime; building with lime requires a completely different approach than “modern” concrete construction.

In Austria, we are connected with both the clay construction community and specialists in historical buildings from the period before modern concrete construction, as well as with monument conservationists in Ghana and producers of building materials from local resources (e.g. wood-fired clay bricks). This is the basis for our construction activities on our land in the Volta Region, as well as for the project in Parrot Village in the Western Region.

Whatch our videos on suatainable construction.