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PUCP – Terra 2012 – Call for submission of abstracts: Deadline extension

CALL FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: DEADLINE EXTENSION
The organizers of the Terra 2012 Conference are pleased to announce that more than 200 abstracts have been received. In order to meet the request of many people interested in participating in the Conference, the deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended until Monday, March 21st, 2011. For more information go to http://congreso.pucp.edu.pe/terra2012/.

INVITACIÓN A PRESENTAR RESÚMENES DE PONENCIAS: EXTENSIÓN DEL PLAZO
Los organizadores de la Conferencia Terra 2012 tienen el placer de comunicar que se han recibido más de 200 resúmenes de ponencias. Para atender al pedido de muchas personas interesadas en participar en la conferencia se ha ampliado el plazo de recepción de resúmenes hasta el lunes 21 de marzo de 2011. Para más información consultar en http://congreso.pucp.edu.pe/terra2012/.

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Windcatcher House

The Begay home is Design Build Bluff’s first project since opening the door to more universities. The students of architecture of the University of Colorado Denver designed a home that responds to a sustainable ethos by using local clay and soils for rammed earth walls and compressed brick for a wind catching chimney which cools the temperature inside during the high summer temperatures. The Windcatcher House, which is totally off-grid and harvests all its water, features an innovative wind tower designed to capture the wind to cool the house.

The Windcatcher House includes local clay for its hand-built compressed brick, as well as the south- and east-facing wall facades. Thermal mass cools the home during the hot, dry summers, and soaks up heat during the very frigid winters. Rainwater is collected from the adjacent carport’s roof and gets reused for the garden.

As with all Navajo Nation homes, this house is nowhere near a power grid, which makes relying on the surrounding earth even more useful and important. The Begays don’t have a car, so they plan to use the carport for an animal barn.

more [ inhabit | university of colorado | green investing ]

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EarthUSA 2011

EarthUSA 2011 will be Sep 30, Oct 1 and 2. Location will be at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

This is the Sixth International Earthbuillding Conference sponsored by the Adobe Association of the Southwest and Northern New Mexico College. The National Hispanic Cultural Center and Adobe in Action will also be sponsors. The Adobe Association of the Southwest is expected to turn itself into Adobe USA.

EarthUSA 2011 indicates a wider field of interest than previous conferences and will include adobe, rammed earth, compressed earth block: CEB, and monolithic adobe: cob. Any material or method that uses clay to bind it together is considered.

Calendar:
May 3: Abstracts due
Jun 3: Acceptance notifications
Aug 5: Full Papers due
Sep 9: Proceedings go to press
Sep 30, Oct 1: Conference and Trade Fair
Oct 2: Tour
Oct 3 -7: Classes, Workshops
Oct 1 – 9: Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

Categories/Themes:
1. Contemporary earthen architecture, construction and engineering
2. Historical buildings, farms, villages and cities including cultural connotations
3. Conservation, Preservation, Replication, Remodeling, Modernizing, Re-purposing
4. The role of earthen materials in heating, cooling, sustainable, ecological, renewable and green design
5. Codes, norms, building methods, material science, seismic considerations
6. Earthbuilding education and technology transfer
7. Marketing strategies for earthen materials in the modern world

Conference Languages:
Spanish and English
Papers will be printed in the Conference Proceedings in the language received. Papers received with translations will be printed in both languages PowerPoint presentations are encouraged to be labeled in both languages

Costs:
The Conference Registration will cost $185 USD with reduction for students. Authors and presenters also pay the registration fee. EarthUSA 2011 is a small conference with few financial resources. A one-day tour will be available Sunday for local earthbuilding sites the cost to be determined. Four and five-day courses and workshops October 3 through 7 are being planned and will include basic adobe construction; rammed earth construction; and arch,vault and dome construction.

Submit your abstract as an e-mail attachment in .DOC format no later than May 3, 2011. Please address your e-mail to: Quentin Wilson, Speakers Committee: earthusa.org@gmail.com

For more information and to download the abstract template visit: www.earthusa.org

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LEHM 2012

Every four years the Dachverband Lehm e.V., the German Association for Building with Earth, organises an international conference and trade fair on building with earth in a different earth building region in Germany together with an excursion in the region.

We are pleased to announce that the LEHM 2012, the 6th International Conference on Building with Earth, organised by the Dachverband Lehm e.V. will take place from 5 – 7 October 2012 in Weimar, the birthplace of the Bauhaus and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The LEHM 2012 will encompass the conference with presentations and poster session on 5 – 6 October 2012 and an excursion on 7 October 2012. The conference programme will cover the following topics:

-Earth building norms and regulations
-Current research in earth building
-Training and education in earth building
-Sustainability in earth building
-Contemporary earth building
-Earth building in renovation

The presentations, papers and poster session contributions will be published in the conference proceedings to accompany the conference. The ‘Call for Papers’ opens in April 2011.

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Wood Marsh Architects Designs Rammed Earth House


Photography by Jean Luc Laloux

Designed by Wood Marsh Architects, this monumental new home in the small town of Merricks overlooks vineyards and Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay. Featuring rammed earth walls, which form the home’s central spine, their design forms shelter against the often harsh coastal environment.


Photography by Jean Luc Laloux

Intended primarily as a holiday and weekend residence, the brief was for a family home that would stand up to the local conditions, requiring little or no maintenance. The client was also keen to ensure that parts of the house could be used, as well as the whole, and as a result discrete openings appear in the central corridor.

More from Wallpaper*

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TerrAsia2011

Asian countries possess a rich archaeological, historical, and vernacular earthen architectural heritage. Research studies have been carried out through the last decades, gradually promoting this cultural richness even though many Asian countries haven’t yet finished drawing up their immovable heritage inventory. Moreover, many more countries of the region are considering the major challenge of preserving their earth architectural heritage. Thus, more projects of conservation and valorization of sites, many of them having been listed on a national scale and by the UNESCO’s prestigious List of World Heritage, are being set up. Another important challenge is the necessity of promoting sustainable architecture and living environment at the core of which the use of natural building materials plays a decisive part. Among these, earthen materials are both abundant and accessible, and together with the rich knowledge and knowhow related to them, offer a great potential. Many fundamental investigations on the material, experimentations on building techniques, but also R&D projects aiming at promoting innovations, have been carried out during the last decades in Asian countries. All these scientific, cultural, social and economic assets, all these progresses, decisive for the future of the Asian Region should be reviewed and much more widely disseminated within the international community. This conference offers such an opportunity.

The conference aims chiefly at assessing the state of the art in research, fundamental and applied, as well as the research and development (R&D) related to earth architecture in the Asian Region, to study recent developments in the field of heritage conservation (archaeological sites, historical and monumental architecture, vernacular building cultures), recent architectural design and housing projects, and recent achievements valorizing the use of earth for promoting a cultural continuity and contributing to the sustainable development and preservation of the cultural diversity.

Schedule
30 March 2011 – Submission of abstracts
30 April 2011 – Notification of abstracts’ acceptance
30 June 2011 – Sending full papers
15 July 2011 – Notification of papers’ revision
15 September 2011 – Final paper delivery

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UPDATE: Nanjing Museum of Art & Architecture: NOT Black Rammed Earth


original project description from the StevenHoll.com website

UPDATE: while the StevenHoll.com website states that “The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black rammed earth over which a light “figure” hovers”, unfortunately I have been informed by the Press Manager at Steven Holl architects that the walls are not black rammed earth, but bamboo formed concrete.

The new museum is sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International Practical Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, expanses of mist and water, which characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition of Chinese painting.

The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black rammed earth over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the figure above. The upper gallery, suspended high in the air, unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. This visual axis creates a linkage back to the great Ming Dynasty capital city. Learn more at the Steven Holl Architects website.

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Holy Cross Church Restored

Church of the Holy Cross, also known as the Holy Cross Episcopal Church, is an historic church in Stateburg, in the High Hills of Santee near Sumter, South Carolina. It is located on land donated earlier by General Thomas Sumter, a resident of Stateburg, and its walls were constructed of rammed earth. Its 2-foot-thick walls were erected in 1852 by using wooden forms to hold local clay as laborers, probably slaves, tamped it down with a special tool, forcing out the water.

Dr. W.W. Alexander, head of the church’s 19th century building committee at the time, had been experimenting successfully with this construction method at his plantation home just across the highway. While the center section is 18th century wooden construction, the two wings were built of rammed earth, or Pise de Terre.

The Church of Holy Cross needed a significant renovation after termites were discovered in the sacristy in 2001. The $1.6 million restoration, paid for in part with a $250,000 Save America’s Treasures grant, replaced major sections of the termite-damaged trusses and roof panels, as well as the floor panels.