​​​​ECO SOUL

Preview

Nir ha'emek is a youth village, with 1200 kids between the ages 13-18, a lot of them with a ruff family background, about 250 of them are staying in the village at all times. The kids learn conventional agriculture (monoculture and chicken farming), they have a dairy farm, horses, and free profession studies like engineers and police force. So these kids are not very connected to any roots, or to much awareness for the environment... these kids are more into surviving this

cruel hard world. the park was sponsored by

'wiso' - women international Zionist organisation.

 

 

 

 

'Bustan Olami'

Nir ha'emek was a project of 'Bustal Olami', this is a company for green eco building by David Renov, one of Israel first eco architects and green movement.  The word 'bustan' is coming from Persian language, meaning 'a place of good smell', like a rose garden, like a fresh smell of a citrus orchard like natural perfume, the word 'olami' means 'global'.

A classic 'Bustan' should be designed with fruit trees, aromatic herbs, a place for resting. Water should run through it, hydrating the plants and people in the garden. In other words 'a garden of eden'.

 

I met David in my mothers village, very fortunate of me, i was looking for some work coming back from Portugal in the winter. i was not expecting for much, but i did know that i need to assist some one, as my active learning diploma assignment. 

this came true, and not only i was assisting a master of mud building, i was getting paid for it! :) 

I think that for david it also worked pretty good, he comes from old native ecology, from building many 'bustanim', and I'm coming from the modern ecology of permacuture, this common sense that he was talking about for years, is very close to all permaculture principles.  I've met a few people like that in my life, that ecology came naturally to them, much before the new age fashion and global enviromental awareness.

and so, for 6 months on and off, approximately 80 days of work, a good budget, and an open design, we made a simple neglected yard, occasionally flooded by rain, very poorly drained, and not inviting in any way, to a beautiful productive, interactive, inspiring 'bustan'.

 

Client interview

The client interview David made with the school principle was the best thing he could hear from a client. 'Just build us an eco park in front of the cheese workshop of the school, and do it nice and pretty'. No what, no how, just 'Eco Parc'.

 

The planing process

Although it is David that made most of the planing before the project had even started, with colleagues, i have joined him as his right hand since about two weeks before we marked the place for earth works.  

David knew he wanted symbols for the '5 elements' to create a garden of Eden for the kids, so they can use all senses when they walk in this magical corner in their home. I helped him plan, design, and implement every one of thous beautiful fetchers.

And with the help of incredible talented people we made it happen.

I have also learned a lot from David about a 'rolling' plan, in other words, the plan is changing all the time, because of other plans getting in or out of the way. And the way David works, i cant say its for better or worse, the uncertainty of a plan can be exhausting some times, if its going to happened or not, and how? 

And some times, you let go and 'let nature do its work'. 'When in peace, every thing falls in to place'... not necessarily the other way like a lot of people think.

 

Design and implementation

Water- Water is the first thing we took in consideration, the drainage before the project was just stuck because of poor planing. The old yard was divided in the middle with a brick path from the main road to the cheese making place.

first thing was to create two main drainage channels, one from the gardens and one for floods that during the summer is a walking stone path, overflowing to another drainage, a little canal across the road which was going finally to municipal sewage. 

All this while flowing as slow as possible so the soil can absorve what it needs and dispose its over flow easily.

Symbolizing the water, there is also a wild life pond in the heart of the park, providing shelter and water for birds, bugs, frogs and fish. The water that feeds the pond are coming form a cooler that is right next to the pond. A 'mashrabia' style small dome made out of agriculture pipes and 'yuta' sacks.

The tap is flowing on top of a mint plant that is growing in the sink, the drainage of the sink is flowing through a stone aqueduct to the pond. Filled with water plants and different height banks, it is self cleaning, and circulating pond, using passive heating for circulation and plants and rocks for filtering.

 

Next was wind and people- The open class was to be a dome, eventually it became a geodesic one.

A beautiful 3v, 8m diameter metal dome, with wood floor and bench which make it look like a giant wine wood barrel.

two teams where doing this work, very nice folks, that shared their knowledge and passion to the work with us.  The wood came from recycled industrial pallets, very strong ones. 

The dome was covered with individual shade net for each triangle. To my opinion his turned out to be a bit of a mistake, for the price and time it took from the project, but as the entrance and the place you can see from far away, David wanted it to be extra aesthetic.

 

The fire element was a field kitchen, made out of mud bricks (adobe), that we built from extra soil we had from the gardens. The kitchen had two integrated 'rocket ovens' with a fixed top, one flat for herbal tea from the gardens and an Arabic 'sag' to make pita bread. The ovens are working on wood scrapes that are falling naturally from the trees or pruning, very officiant with wood, very delicious and fun to make.

 

Vegetation and soil was manifested in a beautiful diverse garden, full of medicinal herbs (lavender, Geranium, Basil, Melisa, Time, Zaatar, Sage, and more and more) each type had a few types with in that type.

Next came the trees, there is a 'citruc corner' with lime, orange, lemon, and grapefruit, a Mediterranean verity with figs, olives, plum, carob and some foreigner trees like the Delicious Figoya.

 

Monitoring  

Since the project was finished David and i came there a few times already, for some maintenance work like fixing some loose covers from the dome, re plastering the mud kitchen and of course, to pick herbs for tea.

This project is a candidate for 'green building' project contest, and hopefully will generate us more work in other youth villages and councils around Israel.

 

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