Tell me what was new.

May 2012

May 09, 2012

Status quo: Building of the house

As already announced in April, the team has begun building. On in total three building sites, the team is working on special tasks.

Knoben

On the Campus there is a workshop, in which the constructing and cutting of the houses interior takes place. This interior consists of recycled wood, becoming the inner workings of our functional blocks. Additionally, the people working in this workshop manage making up the floor. The wood, originating from the old Tivoli, has successfully been cut into ribs and is already

The second workshop, the carpentry Knoben in Heinsberg, is responsible for the constructing of the functional blocks. They already finished this procedure. On this workshop has been erected the underneath construction of the floor as well. By being separated into five elements this structure is representative for the five different living areas. The carpentry Knoben took also care of the roof’s structure. It will be divided into seven elements: Four of them form a frame, and the three ones left will be inserted into the frame in a defined distance. The proofing is made in the hall in Jülich. Areal units of synthetic materials are fixed one top of one another in a staggered way. By doing so, a slope assuring the rainwater drainage is created.

The third workshop, which is situated in Jülich, is a big hall provided by the Research Center Jülich and enables both integrating the produced elements into the building of the house and fabricating the facade. The collected CDs, for which is had no further use, are recycled by being melted in an oven and therefore are joined to areal units of the facade. These units are installed onto the functional blocks.

So, the main emphasis regarding the team’s work will be shift onto the workshop in Jülich because there will take place the houses’ setting.

May 01, 2012

“What’s up with you?” Counter Entropy and Aachen’s tradition

In the afternoon of April the 30th the first members of the Counter Entropy team arrived in a garden, meeting to saw of a couple of birch branches. These knots should serve later as may trees, but this will be explained in the following.
After reusing parts of the former soccer stadion “Tivoli” of the soccer club “Alemannia Aachen”, they got acquainted with other cultural aspects of Aachen’s regional lifestyle.

The Counter Entropy Team in the night of 'Dance into May'

In the night from 30th of April to 1st of May putting branches or whole trees in front of a girl’s house is customary. The act performed by bachelors includes the decorating of the trees by long and flattering ribands. This custom goes back to the medieval tradition, which was put into practice throughout the country. Today, the Rhine region and South Germany are the only remaining places, which celebrate the so-called “Maynight”.
Then, the tradition took place at Walpurgis night, the first full moon night in the year after the spring equinox. But in the late Middle Ages carrying out the Maynight on 30th of April became more usual.
The tradition served as a guarantee of getting the bachelors married. So the maytree did have the function of a marriage proposal. Today the trees’ meaning has changed: they reveal a person’s love or deep affection for the chosen person. So the boys form groups and help each other in putting the trees in front of the flats.
The members of the Counter Entropy team decorated the trees with black and orange colored ribands, with the Counter Entropy logo on such, in order to arrange them all over the city. When our people were seen, they were directly asked excited about the reason for carrying around the Solar Decathlon trees. The observers where obviously amused by watching the team tieing the branches to street lamps or similar spots. But only after finishing the decorating job, the real celebration could begin.