Nikolay Shahpazov - Earth, the most sustainable building material we have got

Описание: Using site excavated subsoil for making earth blocks for the building, designing a large vault with earth blocks, scaling up rammed earth construction.
The presentation will cover some of the main aspects of making earth blocks from site subsoil.
It will also show a current project where we are planning to use earth blocks to form a large 6m high vaulted space. There will be few competition entries examples demonstrating how rammed earth can be used for larger structures including a 30m high design.
The energetic Nikolay - a passionate and outspoken associate at the Award-winning Bennetts Associates (a B-Corp) - who has pioneered the use of site-excavated subsoil to manufacture ultra-low carbon earth blocks for building. Nikolay’s role is finding ways to implement the use of regenerative building materials within the practice.

Bennetts Associates’ first project to use the blocks is the Apex, a new laboratory building that forms part of the Tribeca development near King’s Cross in London and will be occupied by the London BioScience Innovation Centre (LBIC). It is the first project in the UK where the use of earth blocks has been achieved at this scale. The building will be completed in early 2024.

Over the last 7 years, he has been looking for ways to move away from designing and building with carbon intensive, resource depleting building materials. His journey started in rural Devon where with the help of Barry Honeyset and Kevin McCabe he developed a design for five affordable eco self built houses using local regenerative building materials. Although the design was not implemented, it led him to two exciting competitions with Expedition Engineering and Atelier 10, where the use of site excavated earth was pushed to its limits.