Earth
Glina · Słoma · Drewno
Clay, straw and timber from within reach of the village. A living system, not heritage.
Earth, Architecture & Code
A rural design laboratory in a Polish village, run in two phases — a week of workshops on site, and eight months of incubation for the projects that come out of them.
Ignite NEB 2026
Nowa Wola, Mazovia
2026 – 2027
Phase 1
Wies Design Lab Workshops
20 – 24 October 2026 · five days on site
Five days of hands-on workshops in the village. Villagers, architects, students and makers design and build together in clay, straw and timber across four to five parallel workshops. On the final day a jury picks the two projects that continue.
- 5 days
- 50+ people
- 4–5 teams
Phase 2
Project Incubation
November 2026 – June 2027 · eight months
Eight months of support for those two teams. Monthly mentoring, prototyping and testing with real end users carry each project through to company registration, and on to two Demo Days in June 2027.
- 8 months
- 2 ventures
- €4k per team
The idea
From a Polish village to a new architectural imagination
Polish peri-urban villages hold the clay, straw and timber knowledge that built rural Poland for centuries — and are quietly losing it. Wies Design Lab puts that knowledge back to work, and turns the week into ventures.
Architecture
Place-based design
Fieldwork, survey drawing, hands-on making. Decisions argued on site with the people who live there.
Code
Digital fabrication
Parametric tools, 3D-printed raw earth and robotics — our EU research, applied to a village yard.
New European Bauhaus alignment
Beautiful, sustainable, together — on a village scale
The NEB values are not a label added at the end. Each one sets a constraint the programme designs against, in both phases.
A new aesthetic vocabulary
Beautiful
Vernacular form meets contemporary craft. The closing village-square festival turns the week into a lived experience rather than a rendering.
Low-carbon by design
Sustainable
Local clay, straw and timber. Circular material flows, climate-adapted construction, and an honest account of what each prototype costs the ground it stands on.
Villagers as co-designers
Together
Intergenerational fieldwork, paired teams, and everything the week learns written down and given back to the host community. Reciprocity, not extraction.
NEB thematic axes
Primary axis
Long-term, life-cycle and integrated thinking. Earth-based construction and circular design as a coherent rural-economy proposition.
Secondary axis
Reconnecting with nature. Place-based materials, biodiversity awareness, climate-adaptive practice.
Tertiary axis
Regaining a sense of belonging. Intergenerational exchange and a working rural–urban dialogue.
The village
A village centre that was never drawn
Nowa Wola sits south of Warsaw, in Piaseczno municipality. At its centre is a pond — willows, reeds, ducks and a few benches — and no plan around it: no path, no shade, no lighting, no shelter.
People use it anyway, around its edges. The distance between what this place could be and how little has ever been asked of it is where Wies Design Lab starts.
Community consultation
The village has already answered
- 81%want a place to rest and relax
- 78%ask first for benches and seating
- 68%want it to serve every generation equally
What matters most here
A place to rest and relax
81%
Which elements to provide
Benches and seating — ahead of every built attraction
78%
Which ecology to add
A flower meadow, then bird nesting boxes
67%
Who it should serve
All age groups equally
68%
What to do with the water
Benches facing it, then a boardwalk — not angling
74%
An important point — do not create a concrete desert; keep the area green.
Respondents were self-selecting, so this reflects engaged residents rather than a representative sample. Percentages are of respondents per question; several questions allowed more than one answer.
- Built fabric
- Residential
- Leisure / public
- Agricultural / open
- Forest
- Water
Phase 1 · Wies Design Lab
Preparation, then five days in the village
Phase 1 runs from September to October 2026. Three open calls, then five days in Nowa Wola that close with a jury naming the two teams who continue into phase 2.
Before the village
7 – 19 Sept
Open call · workshop tutors. One tutor leads each of the four to five parallel workshops in clay, straw and timber. Applications are reviewed in the week of 21 September.
23 Sept – 10 Oct
Open call · Changemakers. Selection and announcements run through the week of 12 October, with online briefings before the event. The Challenge Owner call runs alongside and stays open right through to the last day of the event.
By 9 Oct
The jury is appointed. Five members from five different fields — EIT Community NEB, the local authority, a Challenge Owner, design and business — so that no single perspective decides.
September to October, week by week
1–5Sep
6–12Sep
13–19Sep
20–26Sep
27–3Sep–Oct
4–10Oct
11–17Oct
18–24Oct
25–31Oct
Comms & village story
Open call prep · tutors
Open call · tutors
Tutor selection
Open call · participants
Village facilities
Jury search & appointment
Selection & announcement
Wies Design Lab
Incubation preparation
- Comms
- Tutor call
- Participant call
- Selection
- Facilities
- Jury
- Incubation prep
- Ventures selected
The five days · 20–24 October 2026
Arriving on the village's terms
- Welcome ritual co-curated with villagers — Wies Design Lab is introduced by the community, not to it.
- Village walk across the four analysis boards, on foot, with the people who live in them.
- Paired intergenerational fieldwork: each Changemaker is matched with a village elder.
- Listening dinner at the świetlica — the village hall — where the day's findings are told back.
Turning fieldwork into a shared map
- Synthesis of the fieldwork into one shared knowledge map, drawn in public.
- Team formation — one team per workshop, four to five in all.
- Evening public seminar on Polish vernacular construction, open to the whole village.
Hands in the material
- Parallel team work: each team develops its own concept, with coach mentorship.
- Live demonstrations of glina (clay) and słoma (straw) techniques by local builders.
- Mid-point peer review — every team presents to every other team.
From concept to something you can hold
- Morning team pitches to the jury and the village.
- Feedback round in which villagers and Challenge Owners respond to every proposal.
- Material prototyping: each team builds a working model or material sample of its own concept in clay, straw and timber.
- Teams refine their proposals for the phase 2 pitch, with coaches on hand.
Exhibition, pitches, and two teams continue
- Public exhibition of the week's models, drawings and material samples, staged in the village square.
- Final team pitches to the jury.
- Two winning teams selected to enter phase 2.
- Village-square festival — music, exhibition and a shared meal.
- The village votes too. Villagers at the festival pick the Village’s Favourite Design, honoured on stage. It is an award, not a selection mechanism — who enters phase 2 is the jury’s decision alone.
What phase 1 produces
Goes into phase 2
4–5 team projects, two of them funded
Four or five team proposals developed across the week, each with a working model and a business case. The jury selects two to enter the eight-month incubation.
Stays in Nowa Wola
A documented village knowledge map
The shared map drawn on Day 02, the catalogue of local materials and techniques recorded during fieldwork, and the exhibition itself — compiled and handed to the sołtys and the świetlica as an open record the village can keep using.
Open calls
Three ways into Wies Design Lab
Taking part is free — accommodation, meals and materials across the five days are covered. Places are limited and each call closes once it is full. Write to us with the subject line on the card.
23 Sept – 10 Oct · 25–30 places
Changemakers
The participants. Architects, designers, students, makers and social scientists who form the four to five teams and work in the village for the week.
- Five days on site, Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 October 2026
- Teams of five to seven, one per workshop
- Working languages: English and Polish
- Two teams continue into phase 2
7 – 19 September · 4–5 places
Workshop tutors
One tutor leads each of the parallel workshops in clay, straw and timber — setting the brief, running the making and guiding a team through the week.
- On site for the full five days
- Practice in earth building, circular construction or digital fabrication
- Applications reviewed in the week of 21 September
Open until 24 October · 3–5 places
Challenge Owners
The village’s side of the table. Sołtys, gmina representatives, local NGOs, cooperatives and village elders who hold the knowledge behind the brief and stay with it from October through to June.
- Brief the teams on what the consultation could not capture
- A Challenge Owner takes one of the five jury seats
- Recruit the residents who test the prototypes in spring
- Speak at the Village Demo Day about what changed
Mentors and technical experts are not part of this call. They are contracted for phase 2 after the two ventures are chosen, so that the expertise matches what those ventures actually turn out to need — if you work in earth and bio-based materials, computational fabrication, product manufacture or venture building, write to us anyway and we will hold your profile for November.
Phase 2 · The Incubation
Eight months from workshop proposal to registered venture
The two teams the jury names on 24 October carry straight on into November. Eight months later each one is a registered company with a design that has been made, tested in the village and costed — shown twice in public in June.
- Monthly mentoring10–12 sessions per venture, plus two cohort clinics
- Expert days6–8 contracted specialists, matched after the diagnosis
- FabricationStudio access, tools and a desktop clay printer
- Legal supportAdvisor engaged from April, through to registration
€4,000
goes to each of the two winning teams — €8,000 in total. It exists so that people who cannot afford to work unpaid can still take part.
It is released in three slices against three checkpoints, marked in the schedule below. Nothing is paid up front.
The schedule, month by month
Nov2026
Dec2026
Jan2027
Feb2027
Mar2027
Apr2027
May2027
Jun2027
Mentoring & diagnosis
Platform & matching
Material study
Design development
Prototyping
End-user testing
Business model & market
Legal entity formation
Demo days & showcase
- Mentoring
- Set-up
- Material
- Design
- Prototyping
- Testing
- Business
- Legal
- Gate & stipend tranche
-
Month 1Nov 2026
Diagnosis and matching. Your venture is profiled across material, fabrication, product and market. Mentor team formed, work plan signed.
Gate 1 · €1,600
-
Month 2Dec 2026
Design development opens. The workshop proposal becomes a design. A parallel study asks what materials are available locally and at what cost. First validation round with the village.
-
Month 3Jan 2027
Design iteration. Detailing and buildability — dimensions, joints, assembly, finish — until it can actually be made. Business model canvas opens.
-
Month 4Feb 2027
Prototype and cost reality. The design is frozen and made at component and small-model scale. Bill of materials, suppliers, unit cost.
Gate 2 · €1,200
-
Month 5Mar 2027
Testing in the village. The prototype goes in front of residents, the seniors' group and community volunteers in Nowa Wola. Recorded, ranked findings.
-
Month 6Apr 2027
Refine and position. Findings go back into the design. Pricing and route to market fixed, legal form decided, filings prepared.
-
Month 7May 2027
Register and validate. The entity is registered — sp. z o.o., fundacja, stowarzyszenie or spółdzielnia socjalna. Second test round, then pitch coaching.
Gate 3 · €1,200
-
Month 8Jun 2027
Two Demo Days, and a written transition plan into Catalyse, Connect or Co-Create NEB.
It ends with two Demo Days
Twelve days apart, in front of two different audiences: the village that co-designed the work, and the Warsaw business ecosystem.
Saturday 5 June 2027
Village Demo Day · Nowa Wola
Held at the pond and the local authority building, with the gmina and the community groups. The work is shown where it was tested, in front of the people who tested it — on a Saturday, so working villagers and families can come. Challenge Owners speak to what changed in the village.
Thursday 17 June 2027
Warsaw Demo Day · Venture Café
Inside the Venture Café Thursday Gathering at CIC Warsaw, which brings its own standing audience of founders, investors and ecosystem partners. Two now-registered entities pitch. A village delegation travels in for it, and the day is filmed.
Scope: the incubation produces component prototypes and small-scale models, not finished construction. Building a proposal at full scale in the village sits outside this programme.
Who takes part
Sixty-five to a hundred people, in six roles
These are the phase 1 numbers. Phase 2 narrows to the two selected teams, their mentors and the end users who test what they build.
| Group | Count | Role in the workshops |
|---|---|---|
| Changemakers | 25–30 | Architects, designers, students, makers and social scientists. Form the 4–5 teams. |
| Workshop tutors | 4–5 | One per workshop, leading the making in clay, straw or timber. |
| Challenge Owners | 3–5 | Sołtys, gmina representative, local NGO, cooperative, village elder. |
| Jury | 5 | Five fields, five seats: EIT Community NEB, the local authority, a Challenge Owner, design and business. |
| Village community | 20–40 | Co-designers, hosts and knowledge holders. Active across all five days. |
| Day visitors & public | 10–20 | Open evening seminars, closing festival, regional design ecosystem. |
| Total reach | 67–105 | Comfortably above the 50-participant floor set for the cohort. |
The argument
Reciprocity, not extraction
Conventional rural-development models move value in one direction: from city to village. Wies Design Lab treats every participant, urban or rural, as both contributor and learner — and writes down what each side brings.
City → village
- Design methodologies and visual language
- Digital fabrication and parametric tools
- Business modelling and legal-entity expertise
- Access to funders, networks and markets
- New interpretations of local resources
Village → city
- Vernacular earth-building knowledge
- Tactile, place-based material literacy
- Communal living and intergenerational practice
- Climate-adaptive, low-carbon construction wisdom
- Slow time and seasonality as design parameters
Full timeline
Both phases, end to end
Where the project stands today, and what comes next.
June – August 2026 Now
Set-up. Host selection confirmed on 19 June, kick-off on 20 July, then research, visual identity and the village search that ended in Nowa Wola. The site goes live at the end of August.
Phase 1
September – October 2026
Three open calls. Workshop tutors 7–19 September, Changemakers 23 September to 10 October, Challenge Owners until the event itself. The memorandum of understanding with the village partners is signed on 15 September and the jury is appointed by 9 October.
Phase 1
20 – 24 October 2026
The five days in Nowa Wola. 50+ participants, public exhibition, festival, and the jury selecting two teams.
Phase 2
November 2026 – June 2027
Eight-month incubation: mentoring, design development, prototyping and testing in the village. Two legal entities registered by May.
Phase 2
5 and 17 June 2027
Two Demo Days — Nowa Wola on 5 June, then Venture Café in Warsaw on 17 June. Each venture leaves with a written transition plan into Catalyse, Connect or Co-Create NEB.
July – December 2027
Closure. Reporting, final settlement and the project archive, after delivery ends in June.
The calls are open
Changemakers, workshop tutors and Challenge Owners for five days in Nowa Wola, 20–24 October 2026.