At the beginning of April took place the first meeting of the partners of the Lifelong learning programme Leonardo da Vinci project "Giving Breath To Buildings". The meeting place was one of the fastest growing city in Turkey - Adiyaman. From Adiyaman is one of our project partners - Adiyaman University, Faculty of Technology. In the meeting there was also the other project partner from Italy - Istituto d'Istruzione Superiore "Orazio Notarangelo-Giuseppe Rosati".

The purpose of the meeting was to get to know the activity field of the Turkish partner - solar heating systems, solar cars and other renewable energy, as well as local historical and ecological buildings. For example they showed us a solar car and solar minibus designed in the university, although we could not see them driving. It is a relatively young university (founded in 2006) and they have just begun with their technological activities.

Very interesting was the visit of the Atatürk dam, that is the fifth biggest in the world (height 169 m, length 1,9 km, with 8 turbines and with the capacity 2400 MW) and where is produced 10% of all the electricity in Turkey. We could see closely the working of this huge hydro power plant.

We were shown also the historic Cendere bridge from Roman times from 3rd century and different old caves (Palanli cave, Pirin caves) where the first signs of people living there are from 40 000 B.C.

During our free time we looked around in Adiyaman and saw the local life, there were organised different evening events for us where we got to know better the project partners and the local culture. The Turkish people turned out to be very friendly and the project meeting was very memorable. The next meeting will take place in Estonia in the end of September, when we will introduce the principles of the sustainable building and teach some practical skills to the project partenrs.

Look at the photos in GALLERY!

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