The Sika Experience

Hello from a ‘Senior’ Sika-Experience, it is almost one year since I registered here for the first time and many things happened since then. First of all I would like to congratulate the four fellows who won the upcoming mining experience-trip. I still remember the feeling of expecting the unexpected like Monserrat describes on her blog. So yes, you will have a great time together and mainly you are going to learn things that never crossed your minds. It is really fascinating to observe and touch all these things that we were reading and studying all these years.

Unfortunately, these ingredients that Sika-Experience offers are not easy to be fully captivated here in Greece, at least nowadays. As you may know my country and mainly its citizens are in the middle of a financial and media cyclone where countries are equal to companies and life equals to numbers.

The consequence regarding people of our age is that there is not a foreseeable future; it is the feeling that it will always be a gigantic invisible hand pushing you down no matter how hard you try.

I believe, the most important thing during this humanitarian crisis is that everyone has to be in deep contemplation and find out the purpose of ‘being here’. We must put on scale our priorities and find out what is worth more, a high-tech camera or a photo with our friends, a re-tweet or a hi-five with our brother?

So it is time to recast our forces, which is always vital, in order to be ready and well-prepared for the challenges to come. After all, in every difficulty seizes an opportunity.

Warm greetings from Greece, best things are still for free!

After a full weekend of snow, the team returns in business again.
Today’s schedule was workshops at Sika’s laboratories at Widen, a small city near Zurich. Excitement rate=high (still),

BUT I would like here to make a point.

Although this trip is Sika’s personnel team work and I strongly feel to mention here how well prepared and organized was, I still feel that Matthias Dick put his personal touch and bonded us together. With his temperament made us a powerful team willing to gain so much experience from an exciting world which, although is everyday life, we hardly knew.

Back to the subject, today’s project was to apply our first week experience. Long story short, we used Sika’s adhesives in order to produce a handmade facade.

So let’s a take a look at Sika’s Lab.

The ‘raw’ materials are waiting for us.

Adjustig Sika’s adhesives.

Applying the stresses.

More adhesives.

And finally a facade is borned.

So that is from today, more news from Milano from now on.

Ps. A meaningful photo from the weekend.

Never stop trying.

Today was the last day in Germany and off to Austria now. Jihyun, Lenka and Rahul were very accurate for our, full of excitement, program on their posts so there is no need for many words.
About today’s schedule I have only three letters for you,

B M W

so no more writing and let the pictures talk!

To be continued..

Hello, this is Alex from Swiss-France  boarders.

Now we are in our van and Matthias drives us to Kerlingen and finally I found some time to write how things are going.

Tomorrow, in a french factory near this city we are going to see the production of float glass, but more of this on a later post.

So far we had the chance to visit Sika headquarters in Zurich and get a tour of characteristics in the backbone production line of the company.

The most impressive of this tour, I think, is that in the center of Zurich and in a residential area Sika produces large amount of its products like Sikaflex  without disturbing or polluting the local neighborhood. But why they don’t produce their products in another country which has low cost production? The reason emerges from it’s standard as a company and it’s commitment to high quality control. It is very important for the highly-trained employees to check the quality of the product that is going to the market with the provided hi-tech equipments.

Now we are at the end of the second day of this experience trip and the purpose of today’s schedule was to realise the glass as a significant part to the ambitious project of constructing a house that produces itself the energy, it’s residents need, and even more, or more scientifically the zero-energy house.

For this purpose Mr Beat Kämpfen, a highly experienced architect on these kind of projects, showed us characteristic buildings which are about to be constructed or are in use.
Significant part in this project has the bonded glass, which is a great innovation of Sika. This glass while reduces the thermal losses of the building, raises the passing light and aesthetic results using wood as a frame but without it’s maintenance cost.

Anyway we are about to reach the hotel now  so more news about our trip are coming next days.
At last but not least I have to say that it feels very comfortable to be near sika’s members who are very willing to help and give us the guidelines of contemporary design.

Au revoir!

Kalimera!

from Athens, I am about to get fascinated by Sika’s experience on structural glass.

So i feel very lucky to have this great opportunity of participating on a such prime program.

See you soon Zurich!

Alexandros