The Adobe Alliance

southss.jpg

The Adobe Alliance, led by Simone Swan, is an organization whose goals are to to build low-cost energy efficient housing that is climatically and environmentally compatible and to fill widespread needs for sustainable, salubrious housing while enhancing the unique landscape of the Big Bend region of West Texas and other desert environments.

Cornerstones Community Partnerships

Cornerstones Community Partnerships, a Santa Fe-based non-profit organization, works primarily with rural Hispanic villages and Indian Pueblos in New Mexico and the southwest to restore historic structures. It encourages traditional building techniques and works to retain cultural heritage and foster civic pride through historic preservation. For the past seventeen years, Cornerstones has assisted over 300 rural Hispanic and Native American communities throughout New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas in the restoration of their historic and cultural structures as a means for the preservation of the rich cultural heritage unique to this region. Over 50 major restoration projects, led by the community, have been successfully completed.

Earth Room

The New York Earth Room, 1977, is the third Earth Room sculpture executed by artist Walter de Maria, the first being in Munich, Germany in 1968. The second was installed at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany in 1974. The first two works no longer exist. The New York Earth Room has been on long-term view to the public since 1980. This work was commissioned and is maintained by Dia Art Foundation and is an interior earth sculpture comprised of 250 cubic yards of earth (197 cubic meters) over 3,600 square feet of floor space (335 square meters) with a 22 inch depth of material (56 centimeters). The total weight of the sculpture is 280,000 lbs. (127,300 kilos).

Nader Khalili

khalili.jpg

Iranian born Nader Khalili, California architect/author is the world renowned Earth Architecture teacher and innovator, and author. He has been a licensed architect in the State of California since 1970, and has practiced both in the U.S. and abroad. Click here to visit Khalili’s website: Cal-Earth, The California Institute for Earth Art and Architecture.

His books, Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own and Racing Alone document his life of searching for a method to fire mud houses and turn them to stone by firing and glazing an entire building after it is constructed from clay-earth on site.