February 24: New week — new info. Skyping Nassib.

Today early morning I have Skyped Nassib with the key questions we have outlined the last time. We have spent about half an hour time in which seeds for common understanding were planted. Previously the office was busy planning a bike ride in support of the project awareness. However the ride was postponed till March because of the recent car explosion in Beirut that gave uneasy mood to people around. Nevertheless the work on Rock Village is happening and 1200 trees were recently planted in the area. (Nassib promised to provide us with the map showing the tree formations).

We begun the conversation talking of how far has shaping of the network of farmers gone now. It appears that due to the lack of funding not much is happening in this area at the moment. To establish the contacts Rock Village plans to hire agriculture engineer, social worker and an administrator. Aside from the salaries the expenses for telephone costs and car transportations should be covered for those workers to be able to work in the area. As soon as Rock Village can allocate finance for this task the work will proceed faster. As it was mentioned earlier on the first phase one family moves into the area of the future Rock Village to establish and exemplary household that may provide some basic needs sustainably and prove the need and vision of it to the local community on personal case. As the project grows and machines for processing are ready to run - purchases from local households will begin.

The aimed objective for the farmer's network is clear. Rock Village hopes to involve up to 300 households with an estimate of 200 tons of grains annual circulation in the process in the end. Focus is on the small farms (under 500m2 of land or 1-5 cattle heads) that will be united in establishing Rock Village production chain. The hope is to learn together to carefully and accurately treat the land and environment while farming. As well, there is no system at the moment that would be regularly collecting the product from little farm households, that does not allow them to properly benefit from their product. For example, milk from the cow will not be collected on time and it poses the question of what to do with the excess product. Rock Village plans to develop milk collection and processing in parallel with the grain collection program. For this, in its turn refrigerating and processing power will be needed. Final marketable products could be cheeses and yoghurts.

However main focus of the project is that far revolving around grains cultivating and processing. We have only briefly touched the agricultural aspect in a talk. What is clear by now is that farming will happen largely in winter (with planting in November) so that most of the irrigation needs will be met with natural rains. However even this is not reliable enough and this year's winter for example was rather dry.

Water resources remain key topic in the conversation. System able to collect grey water for irrigation is brought by Nassib as one of the most desired elements on the Phase 1 of building. Currently the well in nearby village is providing up to 80m3 of water per hour. How much of this will be able to Rock Village for obtain is an open question now. Outcome will finalize according to the public relation and authorities perception of the project needs. Alternative plan for supporting water needs in Rock Village is buying a truck with water reservoir and pulling water pumped from the river (7 km away). The need for water in Rock Village can be quite massive in the end since all the grain processing will take place in their facilities.  Processing cycle includes following stages (at least these if not more): cleaning of the grains, disinfecting the grains (that happens in a tightly closed place with chemicals), sorting by size (possible, yet not essential),  lifting to the boiler, boiling (500 kg per time), drying on the rooftop, crush, drying again, packaging. Few important aspects for sustainable planning can be the fact that boiler water is drained, for example. As well separate industrial machines needed (on many of the stages) that will require space and power. Production area is not same with living area of the Rock Village inhabitants.

Another area of consideration is waste collection. Initial plan for the Phase 1 of Rock Village project was to call 10-20 housewives in the nearby village for kitchen waste collection and establish a compost plant in a Rock Village household. Aalto team was not entirely optimistic about complex composting system payback on the early stage of development. However providing exact numbers and clear examples could still help Rock Village planning the system that grows by time. People in the area seem to be well concerned about waste collection in general. Details are little on this account, but the waste collection factory is going to be build and the money for it are allocated already from 30 villages.

Lebanese University partners have had presented their 5 projects of Rock Village possible architecture last week. No preference was given to a single solid project, however the work done was impressive and final decisions will be pulled from all of the projects. We should get in contact with University on our own and obtain their studies as they have made some field explorations and talked to locals in the villages. We have gotten the soil report from Nassib (however we will still need a person reading Arabic to help us with the translation).

For further numbers and technical details Nassib recommend two institutions working in the area. The first is LARI, Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute that provided soil study seen above. Their email can be found from the bottom of the page and more information online. Another institution to get in touch with is ICARDA, Sustainable Agriculture for the Dry Areas, who has the reports on local possibilities in harmless farming. We should get in touch with these organizations to support our study with technical details.  

As out trip to Lebanon currently seems to be cancelled, we have to establish another system of communicating Rock Village now. Nassib agreed to Skype again next Monday morning, which gives us enough time to end up with more questions.

Meeting in 17th February 2014

After the Valentine's days meeting we agreed to meet again on this Monday morning, before submitting our project document. We already had people missing because they had other errands. Axel was travelling and Konrad got sick. So the people present in the meeting were me, Sakari, Ville and Sasha. Aino was there too to supervise and providing advice.

The first thing that came up in discussion was the planned field trip. It was already known that I can't participate in it, due to personal reasons. But now Konrad also wasn't going and Sakari was uncertain. Whether the field trip will take place, remains to be seen.

At the beginning in the meeting it was only me, Sakari and Aino. While waiting for Ville and Sasha, Aino showed us an introduction video about Rock Village. The video was actually quite useful, as it provided us information regarding the Rock Village area. From that, we began to discuss about the climate in the area. We had already determined that if the village can utilize wind energy, we'd need to determine the average wind speeds. It was also interesting to learn the average altitude of the area when looked from sea level: approx. 550 meters.

When Sasha and Ville arrived, Sakari had to leave for other errands. After that we began to discuss our project for the Rock Village. To get a more clear understanding about what we want to focus on right now, we brainstormed a mindmap. In that mindmap we asked ourselves questions concerning our project. In the end, we got this kind of mindmap.

Through this picture, we decided to focus now on the network of farmers and providing agricultural solutions for the Phase 1 of the Rock Village project. In phase 1 the plan is to settle one family to the area with means to handle their own farming. We already mentioned some of this in our project document.

Finally, we agreed to meet next time on Wednesday, 19th February. Our plan was to get in contact with Professor Nassib with Skype, so that we could ask questions about Rock Village directly from him. After all, he has been working for Rock Village for years.

Getting active online, recap from Valentine's Day meeting

A month has passed since the time we have met for the first time as a team.  We have had enough time to get going slightly wrong direction in our project research and getting back to the track.

On today’s meeting we have decided that after every meeting one of us will make a blog post, so that this info channel is alive. Today it is me, Sasha, talking to you.  Hello!

Here are few more arrangements we agreed on:

One. All the guys should email Sasha their photo and 1 paragraph personal intro to be publically released with the following posts

Two. This weeks biggest task is compiling the project document. Since the delivery deadline is Monday 9am, contribution to Project Document should be done by Sunday evening (Sunday 18.00 Vesa is going to polish the text). Tasks were shared on Monday and I may guide you in the situation if you still need some help. We would send a draft in a night and fix the final version on Monday meeting.

Three.  Next team meeting is on Monday 10 am in Design Factory.

Current project planning has the following key moments:

One. Our main focus this year is “Phase 1” of the Rock Village settlement, when one family is going to be living in the area. We would be looking for hints on establishing a sustainable agriculture in the area.

Two. Idea of working on biogas plant, that initially was coined as a core focus was neglected by the team as not suitable. Motivation for this is the fact that biogas plant is proved to be not efficient in the households with under 50 heads of cattle. Therefore on initial phase of Rock Village development there is no need for such a system.

Three. Composting of agricultural waste and simple water treatment solutions may become focus for now.  

Four. Key communication figures in out process are Nassib and Maria from Al Amal Institute.

There were few more background facts discussed that worth attention:

One. The situation with the water supply to the area is organized for now. Area authorities are going to draw the pipe from a new local well to the RV that will sustain the needs of the first development phases. However, some bureaucracy and poor finance is not making it easy and there are a lot of delays.

As well, the village that has gotten the well is going to put down the rain water harvesting system that was functioning previously.

This raises the question, could some simple water harvesting system be integrated into the building of Rock Village? Do we have any statistics about the rain in the area of the future settlement? (That far we only know it is pretty irregular. Nearby desert climate (dry winds) is effecting the climate in a RV area, therefore the situation might be quite unpredictable).

Two. Here are some questions that keep coming during or meetings:

Which seasons would Rock Village plan to be farming and what are the conditions?  (This will influence the numbers that go into irrigation need estimations)

Aino: Agriculture wasn’t planned yet. But this can be a good start.

Ville: Does the soil loose nutreans?

Aino: Yes, and permaculture is called to answer this?

Sasha: Seems like reasonable questions might help Rock Village better than stiff answers?

What is the family consumption routine? What are the general numbers for water consumption(liters per day)?  

Aino: One shower per day is a common case. (How many liters?) Water is heated by the sun (throughout the year).

Has someone studied the irrigation needs for crops? (Axel?)

Draft of the agenda for Monday meeting :-

.Finalize and sent off the PROJECT DOCUMENT

.Talk of the trip to Lebanon, that was earlier scheduled for March

- Time should be agreed.

- Insurance should be made. According to Tapiola Lebanon is an area of the high war risk.

- Plan of working and collecting material should be done

- Preparatory work should be planned.

.Following blog post should be compiled during the meeting.

.The names of the projects should be laid out. Currently we talk of both Aalto and Rock Village project as “projects”.

.Set up communication model with Nassib.