I insist on doing things ethically for the futur of our Amazigh coast, eco designed and easy to repair. Behind this idea is to educate tourist on how to respect our environment and create the best experience for travelers and for us amazigh surfers (but also berberes, europeens, and all arab tourists of all nations.
I have met @unknown_author in Tarfaya (the little prince city) and he thought that getting the regular surfboard from tourists was not sustainable and too expensive/fragile in the long term (+ tourists are enough polluting the ecosystem already). He thinks that we need solid surfboards but we also need to find the best sustainable local ways to do so.
Perhaps I want to find Paulwonia wood, its a japanesse tree that also grows into our dry region as it doesn’t need so much water and is super solid and flexible enough to create beautiful designed rideable surfs. I have no idea if we build boards ourselves the amount of wood needed…also I hope we do not destroy the ecosystem by collecting to much wood from nature so we need to study that environmental question.
For the rest we need few tools and eco glue…perhaps some eco resin and fibre (hempf or else probably)
We could also make Kite surfs, snow boards (for atlas mountain) or even wooden spoons (Its morocco speciality with Thuya wood) and other kind of wood furnitures if needed….carpenters and wood craft master wood be nice to have while we work around…
time spending > 5 days to one week max
I like the idea, and that you’re careful and ecologically conscious about the choice of material I don’t know anything about surfing and the requirements for a good surf board, so not sure if the proposal makes any sense but recycled plastic could be another durable and lightweight raw material. (The question is of course how to make this durable. But that’s something to explore, as in “the artist is the one who limits their choice of tools and then masters those she chooses”.)
Whatever technique you choose, no need to squeeze the project into a week. I think we have enough capacity in the house for longer stays, as long as needed.
A thought… could be some educational fun in the house on the side to have some screening nights of documentaries on the first surfboard makers back in the day too!
I’m also wondering about bamboo…? Is it local there? I know it’s super durable and flexible.
Bon courage - j’ai hâte de voir les processus avancent en tout leurs beautés!
bamboo tends to grow in sub-tropical, very wet environments i believe, so probably not ideal for the Moroccan coast line. I think a bamboo surfboard would look amazing though! Also, that idea of having a regular film screening about surf pionneers is really cool. You could open it up to the wider community, bringing locals into the space as well as drawing more attention to the tourist activity. There may even be some international funding available to finance screening work like that.
This project sounds really cool. I’d love to see how it develops. Good luck @Maatoug
i also want to try to form tadelakt shapes (local morocan clay) and use it as frame to grow mycelium innit with the shape of a board…then apply natural fibre onto it…
so the practical question is, which one should we go for during the residency ? Or shall we try both ? how much does this material costs and where can we get them to make a prototype.
In case of wood there are wood working workshops near Essaouira, will pass by them in the coming days. so practically for wood boards we can plan in house and go make it in Essaouira, and add the final touches in house.
In case of mushrooms and mycelium, I don’t have enough info.
so @unknown_author your call. and can you give me a date to book you a place.
@Maatoug متى يمكنك الانضمام الى سيدى كاوكى بالتحديد
يمكننا العمل على صناعة الالواح من الخشب مبدأيا …
Bonjour, j’ai adoré l’idée Je trouve que ça donnera l’occasion aux habitants de profiter pleinement de leurs plage. ça pourrait être un projet pilote à réadapter dans les pays proche facilement. Je ne suis pas une spécialiste dans les planches de surf, mais au premier abord, je suis de l’avis de Matthias que le recyclage (plastique, filets de poisson de chasse,…) réponds parfaitement à l’éthique du projet et à la question d’éco-durabilité. Il est aussi possible de mettre en place un système de recyclage des planches de surf crées une fois usées (exemple). Je ne connais pas Sidi Kaouki mais d’après certain article, cette region souffre de problème de pollution. @Maatoug ton projet aidera à résoudre le problème. j’ai pas encore de solution miracle pour la collecte des déchets…
Le concept du Mycofoam est aussi intéressant mais il faut voir le coup final de la planche par rapport au niveau de vie des locaux…
C’est vrai aussi que les planches en bois sont super belles mais d’après l’article partagé prés de 70% du bois exploité au Maroc provient de l’import donc je n’arrive pas à concevoir la faisabilité de l’idée. Alors même si vous trouvez le bois de Paulwonia, l’utiliser sera contradictoire avec les valeurs du projet (respect de l’environnement). Est ce que ce projet sera accompagné de plantation des arbres de Paulownia? (terrains à planter, les accords des municipalités, temps de croissances… ).
sinon ça me fera plaisir de travailler avec vous sur des designs et des illustrations inspirés de Sidi Kaouki pour les planches
Summarizing the status quo of the project till now
making wood surfboards now is not feasible at the moment as the paulownia wood is not available locally in Morocco, and importing wood as @dorra-b mentioned earlier will be contradictory to the project goals. Although Paulownia trees are being introduced and planted in Morocco in the past years but not “harvested” for wood for now; Currenlty, One Can’t buy locally produced Paulownia wood. [ other wood options like Cedar is already overexploited in the region and might not provide the same quality as Paulownia ] The Paulownia wood should be available locally in the near future anyways.
This leaves us with other options, either to experiment with mushrooms following on the footsteps of this trials mentioned above, or play with upcycling plastics that is found everywhere here [ a longer post will follow about the waste problem in Sidi Kaouki - but for now setting up a small precious plastic workshop is not a bad idea, @matthias already started writing down some proposals on the Dynalist including a beach cleaning robot ] or make some surfboards out of Cardboard.
For making the body of the board there are different ways that we can experiment with [ please add others in comments ]
Molding it; Basically making a mold and let mushrooms grow, or pouring molten plastic or foam into it.
Making a skeleton, then adding a top and bottom covering.[ mainly for wood ones ]
Creating a hollow body grid structure, then covering it with glass fiber and resin ( or other alternatives ) -
so we have to ways to go,
There is a step by step guide on how to make a Cardboard one including the files needed to cut the parts needed to make the body structural grid using CNC machine. ( other designs could be found here as well )
There is lots of room to hack and play with this, we can grind the plastics and make skeleton of the boards or the structural grid out of it.
–
[text-direction=rtl]
حيث ان خشب البولينا ليس متاح حاليا فى المغرب فيمكننا العمل على انتاج الالواح اما من المشروم او من البلاستيك المعاد تدويره او من الكرتون
[/text-direction]
[text-direction=rtl]
البلاسيتك يمكننا تكسيره عن طريق ماكينة لقطع صغيرة و نجرب معا لنجد طريقة لصهره ليشكل اللوح
[/text-direction]
[text-direction=rtl]
او يوجد طرق لعمل اللاواح من الكرتون ( يوجد فيديو يوضح الطريقة هنا )
[/text-direction]
I really love the idea ! as a product designer i think that exploring THE PALM TREE LEAVES is perfect for an ecological surfboard ( no trees are cut for the process and the Leaves are naturally renewable ) we could manage to learn ancestral african palm leaves weaving technics and they could be coated with resin after that as the exterior surface. regarding the main core could be made with Foam that we could collect from broken refregirators
I’m very excited to participate at this project and explore this idea with you edgeryders !
Marvelous idea sofien ! it suits my project’s idea ! I’m working on an ecological co-living and coworking space dedicated to the recycling and use of the palm tree and all of its componements in every stage of their living cycle, because I believe that GBELLI (an amazing region in the south of Tunisia) is fortunate with its desert and the beautiful palm trees in its Oasis and can offer a huge number of jobs to its youth if they valorize these assets correctly and co-work together on this !
So I think that we can work together with the edgeryders to explore this rich material ‘ THE PALM TREE LEAVES and other componements …’ to make spectacular products !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD_XnqbSJVI this is another way we could explore to concretize the ecological idea of the surfboard ,what they did is merly a start we could do much more especially on the aetethical part on top of that the impact on the environment is much bigger since we’ll be handling the garbage matter plastic bottels more specifically of the region
Bamboo is a pretty invasive plant. I hope they consider that before plating a lot of it. California is full of plants brought here from somewhere else, always with good intentions, and some of them totally take over the environment.
@Sofien-Dahem, @hazem here is a video about the Nopal cactus I told you about. @hazem the video is in spanish, but you can speak it already a little bit no? You can mix the cactus juice with lime and it makes a strong glue like plaster that is used for mixing into outdoor paint to make it durable. I was thinking maybe it can also be used for covering the bamboo structure of the surfboards with it to make it waterproof and durable.
I don’t know anything about surfing and the requirements for a good surf board, so not sure if the proposal makes any sense but recycled plastic could be another durable and lightweight raw material. (The question is of course how to make this durable. But that’s something to explore, as in “the artist is the one who limits their choice of tools and then masters those she chooses”.)
Je trouve que ça donnera l’occasion aux habitants de profiter pleinement de leurs plage. ça pourrait être un projet pilote à réadapter dans les pays proche facilement. Je ne suis pas une spécialiste dans les planches de surf, mais au premier abord, je suis de l’avis de Matthias que le recyclage (plastique, filets de poisson de chasse,…) réponds parfaitement à l’éthique du projet et à la question d’éco-durabilité. Il est aussi possible de mettre en place un système de recyclage des planches de surf crées une fois usées (
] or make some surfboards out of Cardboard.
