In a disused slate quarry in Wales’s Dyfi valley, a group of pioneers settled in 1973 to test wind power, hydro and low-energy houses. The Centre for Alternative Technology, an educational charity, has become one of Britain’s leading environmental schools.
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Its Graduate School, opened in 2007, has produced more than 2,500 graduates in sustainable architecture, energy and food. The WISE building by Pat Borer and David Lea opened in 2010: 50 cm hemp and lime walls, and a circular lecture theatre with rammed earth walls 7.2 metres high, 320 tonnes of earth, the tallest in the UK.
WISE sleeps 40 in 24 en-suite twin rooms and caters for more than 150 delegates from its vegetarian kitchens; its rooms take 2 to 130 people. Since 2023 the site has been reserved for courses, groups and events. Machynlleth station, with direct trains from Birmingham, is 5 km away.
Photo credits : Rosser1954 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) ; Tom Parnell (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
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