KALÁKA-PART 1: Building a rammed-earth structure the Hungarian way

This film is the first part of Kaláka (2022), a documentary film that investigates the dynamics that emerge within the context of a rammed-earth hut that was built during a couple of hot summer days in Nemesvámos, a small village lying near the northwest side of Lake Balaton. The building -initially intended as a toolshed- transforms into a living space as the people constructing it come to appreciate the physical work, mental effort and the time put into it.
The film is meant to act as a very loose guide to making traditional rammed-earth structures, but with a focus on documenting the processual details that emerge from the materiality and sociality of the site. The traditional design features paired with the materiality lends itself to a very resilient structure that is durable when maintained and cared for, but which at the same time, has the ability to decompose fully back into the soil once its function is lost.
Rammed-earth as a building material carries great potential as it is widely available, cost efficient and customizable. The thick walls provide insulation from extreme temperatures naturally, which is becoming an increasingly important factor in building to withstand climate change. The main challenge today in building rammed earth structures does not lie in the scarcity of tangible resources but rather in the knowledge and know-how of building with soil. Furthermore, the communal systems of building rammed-earth structures is becoming increasingly scarce, especially in the Global North. This film aims to therefore highlight the importance of community in this building method, which is an inextricable part of the building process.
#rammedearth #sustainability #tinyhouse
Read more about the project:
Website- culturingcare.org/kalaka/
Instagram- @culturingcare

[@penelope8980]

I like your "inspectors". 😺🐶

[@parthoroy5300]

Waiting for your part 2 release 😊

[@johanv4668]

very nice video and nice idea to make a wall. what i most like is the beautiful cat

[@Habibilehm]

Great job! 👍👍

[@laulaja-7186]

Natural building and small residential architecture- the only real winning combination for what the world needs now. Funny though how arbitrary rules and abstract considerations in modern society have forced us to mostly pursue one or the other.

[@Juancarlosp1798]

Waiting for part 2! 😢

[@ravi2391]

Waiting for part 2..!

[@conuncuchillo]

this is beautiful

[@rikunjshah]

This is very interesting! Love the idea of using a cob like mix after every three layers. Definitely makes the monolithic rammed earth a bit more flexible. In Austria, Martin rauch uses a burnt brick at the exterior edge of every third layer which serves as an erosion barrier for the wall. Possibly combining these two ideas together would help make the resultant rammed earth wall more flexible and durable. Thanks for sharing the video. It’s beautifully shot too :)

[@margaretapinter]

Thank you for the kind comments and for your interest! Yes, that very thin layer of straw helps the structure in shifting as it dries over time especially :) Interesting to see the slight differences in doing things in similar vernacular architecture! In the case of this structure we are going to be covering all the walls with a mixture of soil, sand, water and wood shavings in order to create a more weatherproof barrier...a process hopefully will be featured in part two!

[@rikunjshah]

Although rammed earth by itself would be quite resistant, plastering it would definitely increase the longevity and also even out the surface at the cob joints. All the best for the part 2! I’m currently researching into ‘formworks for a communal rammed earth building process’ as part of my master thesis and would love to document this process by using your video as one of the case studies if that’s alright. Happy to share the final outcome of it if you’re interested :)

[@margaretapinter]

@@rikunjshah Sounds like an interesting topic for a masters thesis, feel free to use this as a case study, I'm glad to help! :) Feel free to shoot me an email you can find it on the culturing care website) if you need more details or if you just want to send me the final product! Good luck with the thesis!

[@rikunjshah]

@@margaretapinter Thank you once again :)

[@laszlopinter3395]

@@rikunjshah Your point about plastering is right on. We already started it in small sections inside last summer, but weather stopped us from making much progress. We use a mix of local clay / sand and fine wood chips, and had to experiement with different ratios before we found what is the most sturdy and least likely to crack. It's tricky and the ratios would vary by the type of soil. So 'localization' is essential, and part of the beauty, even though it limits standardization to some extent. Getting soil moisture right during ramming is key. When we rammed the top layer, the soil was too dry, and we will probably need to remove some 30 cm because it's not hard enough. We will finish the walls with 2-3 layers of sun dried mud bricks. We are planning a green roof with native plants. Stay tuned and good luck with the thesis!

[@beejonsahu9922]

Good video. Great job guys. Yes joining of community is important in such building projects. This process in such house building too is very sustainable one.

[@margaretapinter]

Thank you for your comment, I wholeheartedly agree, the aspect of community cannot be ignored in this type of contstruction!

[@user-tp3ji7md9u]

What is the roof load weight to rest on the walls?

[@balwindersidhu7007]

Very very nice , I am indean, part 2 send

[@aneesurrahmankhan6798]

Please upload! Part 2

[@TheEnigmaticmuse]

It's up now

[@TheEnigmaticmuse]

Are the surrounding homes built with this technique?

[@user-tp3ji7md9u]

Great job maam. Thats all soil? Any concrete mixed in?

[@margaretapinter]

No concrete, just soil and sometimes a little sand!

[@abdullahbayram7623]

When will the next phase come? I am eagerly awaiting...

[@margaretapinter]

We are hoping to finish the second half of the structure this summer, the process is very weather dependent, so we had to split it into two summers' work :) Stay tuned!

[@abdullahbayram7623]

@@margaretapinter I will follow the process with interest. 😉

[@batuwitamaithri9789]

ඇයි වතුර ටිකක් වැඩි කරල තලන්නේ නැත්තේ?

[@therearedoors]

The amount of b-roll makes it kinda hard to follow the process. Otherwise very cool.

[@margaretapinter]

Thanks for the comment. I was also very much part of the building process, which did not leave as much time to properly document the whole thing as much as I wanted to. Truth be told, this video wasn't ever meant to be an instructional video anyway, and the slow pace/meandering visuals aren't everyone's cup of tea, which is fine as well :-)

[@raisalengko9056]

Where is the part2 ?

[@margaretapinter]

Hi, the structure is built over two summers (because rammed earth is highly weather/climate- dependent), this summer being the second one. We are hoping to start the second phase of work in mid-July, and a video documenting that process will be up soon after hopefully. This is long-term project, and even after the two phases it still won't be fully complete probably :)

[@stberchmans]

It’s a wonder it doesn’t wash away during the rainy season.

[@margaretapinter]

To be fair we did cover the top for a year, but only because it wasn't finished. Once painted- and periodically maintained with limewash, these structures can last for centuries!@@stberchmans

[@ralpha679]

Kalaka is just like the Irish meitheal - they're both brilliant concepts, but there appears to be no English equivalent.

[@tombstonechess2231]

That's just cob, that's not rammed earth.

[@margaretapinter]

They are similar in material use, but quite different in application and technique, so it's an easy mistake to mix the two. However, the use of a wooden formwork and 'mallets' to compact loose earth is indeed classified as rammed earth, even though there is of course a lot of variation regionally in how exactly the ramming earth process is carried out. Feel free to check out pages 227-229 from the scientific article by Niroumand, Hamed, M. F. M. Zain, and Maslina Jamil. "Various types of earth buildings." Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 (2013): 226-230, which explains the difference between rammed earth and cob, among many other earth-building techniques.

[@kennydon]

Doesn’t all the straw and carbon make this more of a rammed adobe?

[@margaretapinter]

Hi Kenny, thank you for your question. The two techniques are quite similar indeed and I am sure that there are cultural differences to what is considered which. Generally speaking however, adobe consists of earth usually mixed with other natural materials (such as straw,) and water, which is then dried out in the form of bricks and only then utilised in the building of structures. Rammed earth on the other hand refers to a technique of building that mimics the way that sedimentary rocks are formed, as relatively dry earth is pounded manually as you can see in the video. In traditional Hungarian contexts the use of adobe bricks and rammed earth as building techniques are still used today, and sometimes they are even used in conjunction with each other. The reason why a minimal amount of straw was added (and only in between every third layer of pounded earth...although this might not be clear from the video itself) was because that layer allows the wall to be a little bit more flexible than it otherwise would be. Though I am unsure of the exact physics, what was described to me by the knowledge-holder is that the straw essentially creates a buffer layer where the layer of pounded earth can move around on top of each other, making the structure more resistant to any sort of external pressure such as high winds or earthquakes. I'm glad that my video brought up such an interesting question and I hope that this helped answer it to some degree!

[@bigonprivacy2708]

@@margaretapinter I have read that using rounded non-flat rammers increases the tensile strength, while flat rammers increases the compressive strength. While the former takes longer, the combination of the 2 seem to ensure a stronger wall overall. Then a contiguous bond beam on top ties it all together.

[@margaretapinter]

@@bigonprivacy2708 I didn't actually think about how the differences in the rammers' shape could affect the levels of compression, but it makes total sense! Thanks for this.