Health dimensions and quality of work in ecological construction: Investigating with craftswomen through a Community for Expanded Research and Intervention

This article explores how overall health and quality of work are experienced and co-constructed by craftswomen in ecological construction, through a collaborative ergonomics research conducted within the Community for Expanded Research and Intervention (CERI) framework. Grounded in a developmental and participatory approach, the project involved shared workshops, field immersions, and intermediate objects for dialogue and intervention, such as video recordings, podcasts, and collectively constructed metrology of dust. The findings highlight persistent constraints and opportunities related to living materials, co-activity, occupational exposures, gendered norms, and other structural or systemic determinants embedded in everyday work practices. In response, the craftswomen develop situated strategies of adaptation and low-tech innovation to protect their health, preserving the quality of work, and sustaining a sensitive relationship with materials and matter. Health criteria were co-developed based on lived experience, integrating the bodily, relational, sensory, and ethical dimensions of work. The process also fostered transformative effects on professional practices, self-perceptions, and collective dynamics, eventually contributing to exchanges with other actors across the sector. For ergonomics, this research calls for a rethinking of intervention frameworks by integrating issues of gender, ecology, and social justice into a reflexive, situated, and committed approach to making actual work activity visible and acknowledged in design and decision-making. • Craftswomen develop low-tech strategies to protect their health and support transitions. • Sensory lived experience grounds shared, situated health criteria in eco-construction. • Collaborative analysis of actual work reveals gendered constraints and regulation strategies. • The CERI fosters transformation and cooperation from work activity, strengthening individual and collective agency. • Ergonomics is renewed through situated, collaborative, ecology-oriented practice.