For 12 years, Bellastock has organized a four days summer festival where architecture students build a city out of natural or second-hand materials.
Although household waste is a serious issue, it is only a third of the amount of construction waste. Almost half of the ecological impact of the buildings are directly linked to the extraction and end of life of the material. There are few initiatives worldwide that offer solutions to these polluting industries. The vernacular technics of earth, stone or wood construction are often being replaced by modern concrete standards that are more profitable in the short term but generate negative health and ecological issues.
Bellastock started as a cheap experiment for architecture students to experiment with real scale, real-life architecture. During this festival, groups of five people have to build their cabin with certain original construction technics linked with a yearly thematic: out of crates, straw, inflatable, wood, floating, mobile or up in the trees.
The beneficiaries are the students that learn a more holistic way to think about the city. They experiment with living in the city they created and get to understand how those specific natural or second-hand material can be used.
During 10 years of experiments, Bellastock has reached a legitimacy and expertise that benefit public local authorities and private sector companies that resort to them to give a second life to derelict material and places.
Resources needed
The cost of the festival is covered by the ticket sales, as well as by subsidies from schools and by local authorities that want to promote sustainable and experimental events. The 130 000 € budget is only possible because of the helping resources network and 100 volunteers
Evidence of success
Students and participants that join the festival and side event conferences turn out to better understand the potential of second hand or natural material and integrate this approach as professionals later on. The experiments they do on site familiarise them with sustainable techniques with earth, straw or second hand material.
For 12 years now it have had national media coverage, hundreds of workshops organized and thousands of students trained.
Potential for learning or transfer
The Bellastock festival have started to expand, teams from Canada, China, Belgium, Chile have either asked the funding team to come or organized a festival themselves. The key factor of success is a solid and experienced team that have already participated in other editions. The upgraded site are either deconstructed and returned undamaged or granted local authorities extra time for longer term experimentation
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Tags: Construction, Cultural, Waste
