The flagship class at Northern New Mexico Community College, taught by Quentin Wilson, will be April 28 to May 9 in El Rito, NM. The class is Arches, Domes and Vaults, ADOB 112 and tuition is $54 plus $30 for fees and administrative items. Possible lecturers are Simone Swan and Greg Seelhorst who has 9 years experience in Africa and association with John Norton’s Woodless Construction. For more information visit the Quentin Wilson Website.
Earth Building Article
Earth Building Takes New Shapes, an article from the Home Energy Magazine Online May/June 1999, describes the current technologies and benefits of earth building.
carpetarea.com
Mud Brick Workshop
If you are in Austrailia, a 2-day mud brick building workshop, instructed by Peter Hickson, a specialist mud brick builder with 20 years experience is coming up in May 2003. Click here for more information.
Desert Works
Rick Joy: Desert Works contains masterfully modern designs in rammed earth by this Tucson, Arizona based architect. Joy uses color, texture, and materials to turn the six houses shown here into spare and subtle evidence of humanity in a vast natural world. He uses a similar approach, with expanded functionality, in the three studio/office designs that complete this book. The quiet of the settings and the simplicity of Joy’s approach are perfect partners in producing architecture appropriate to a vast, unpeopled place.
CRATerre
CRATerre-EAG, The Center for the Research and Application of Earth Architecture, is part of the School of Architecture of Grenoble, France, which offers the only Masters Degree in Earth Architecture in the world. The website is only in French, but you can translate at babelfish.
Terra Cruda/Raw Earth
www.terracruda.com has some interesting examples of modern earth architecture. The site is only in Italian, but you can translate at babelfish.
Adobe Resource
Quentin Wilson is the “The Adobe Building Resource of Northern New Mexico”.
Earth Building Books
The Dirt Cheap Builder offers several books on building with earth.
Architecture for the Poor
Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt describes Hassan Fathy’s plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.