This year, for the second time, after 2017, the REGIO EARTH Central and South-Eastern European Festival of Earth Architecture was held in Hungary.
After three highly successful and increasingly popular festivals, a two-year pandemic hiatus followed. As with any other themed festival, Regio Earth was a challenge to revive the momentum and enthusiasm of three years ago. Moreover, the last edition (2019, Mosorin, Serbia), hosted by our Serbian partners, set the bar very high, both in terms of attendance and professionalism. Together with all these challenges, the Hungarian organizing team started their work with great enthusiasm in Tengőd, in the school of the Environmental Builders Organization.
At the end of the event, we can conclude that the huge amount of work put into the organisation was not a waste of energy. In total, more than 300 people attended the four-day event. Participants came from all over the world, from Estonia, Italy and Chile. Although the Hungarians were the dominant force, the many foreign guests and performers created a truly international atmosphere at the Festival.
As with the previous three festivals, this year's festival was open to the public; it emphasised multi-generational knowledge transfer, with separate children's workshops and family-themed programmes; it retained its international flavour, with participants from more than 12 different countries; and it sought to be versatile, with traditional tile building methods and the most innovative construction techniques being showcased.
The practical workshops offered traditional vernacular wall building methods such as the battered wall, the stacked mud wall, or the adobe brick throwing; and contemporary modern building techniques. Among the latter, decorative clay plastering, exposed rammed earth walls and the 3D printer for a mud house, a rarity by European standards, stand out.
Alongside this, the Eco-Building Materials Expo ran throughout the festival and was accompanied by the 5th EcoHome Expo, another flagship event for sustainable building in Hungary.
During the four days of the festival, we reached hundreds of people in the field in person and tens of thousands through the media. Numerous video reports and newspaper articles were produced, as well as many posts and entries. Most importantly, everyone we came into contact with during the festival was extremely inspired and appreciative of our cause. And in today's world, where we have to prove every day that natural building materials are not the past but the future, this is a very hopeful experience.