Emerging Objects explores the frontiers of technology and material using traditional materials (clay, water, and wheat straw), to push the boundaries of sustainable and ecological construction in a two phase project that explores traditional clay craft at the scale of architecture and pottery. The end goal of this endeavor is to demonstrate that low-cost and low-labor construction that is accessible, economical and safe is possible. The project began in the contemporary borderlands along the Rio Grande watershed beginning in El Paso and Juarez and ended near the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which was the edge of the historic border between the U.S. and Mexico prior to 1848. The entire region has employed traditional pottery and earthen construction traditions for centuries. More at Mud Frontiers
Swoon
This Earth-inspired project by Tres Birds Workshop is a 7,000 sf private artist’s residency that uses 100% renewable resources, demonstrating fossil-free potential of the built environment. Four vertical geothermal wells were installed to transfer the Earth’s energy to the building’s heating and cooling system. A solar electric roof on the carport generates energy for interior LED lighting and electricity. To test the energy efficiency of the structure, a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) was performed, ranking it in the 74th percentile and exceeding code requirements by three times.
The structure was built using 200 tons of rammed Earth, a composite of regional dirt and pigments, compressed into 30” thick walls. This adds significant thermal mass to the building’s whole, optimal for temperature regulation. Bearing the structural load, these dense walls allow the space to exist free from obstructions, ideal for a simplified interior and exhibiting artwork.
More information at tresbirds.com/SWOON
Earth Prism
Architect Sean Connelly’s installation A Small Area of Land (Kaka‘ako Earth Room), a “temporary earth sculpture” made from 32,000 pounds of volcanic soil and coral sand, can currently be seen at the ii gallery in Honolulu, Hawaii. The sculpture is a prismatic monolith with dimensions 7′ tall, 9′ long, and 4′ wide, and it features a single sloping surface that aligns with the position of the sun and moon on a key date in the history of land in Hawaii.
Over the course of the exhibit, the sculpture slowly falls apart as Connelly wanted to see “what a version of this might look like in Hawaii, on Hawaii’s terms.”
Earth USA 2013
Earth USA 2013 is the Seventh International Conference on Architecture and Construction with Earthen Materials initiated by Earth USA. The conference organizer is Adobe in Action.
The formal conference will take place on October 4 and 5, 2013 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. October 6th will be dedicated to local earthbuilding tours and excursions. The conference is being held at the New Mexico Museum of Art in the St. Francis Auditorium (107 West Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501). Earth USA 2013 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 as a binder is considered.
Earth USA 2013 is now accepting abstract submissions (due April 14, 2013) for conference presentations. For more information visit http://earthusa.org/
Glendale Childcare Center
Located in Glendale, California, the 23,000 square-foot childcare facility, designed by Marmol Radziner, accommodates 236 children between infant and Pre-K ages. The complex is the first LEED Gold Certified building in Glendale, and is the largest rammed earth building in Southern California. The sustainable strategies incorporated into the building, including photovoltaic panel canopies and structural rammed earth walls, are key visual and tactile elements in the design, emphasizing the facility as both a learning environment and an educational tool.
House No. 6
The Drachman Design Build Coalition, a non-profit organization at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture + Landscape Architecture led by professor and Associate Dean, Mary Hardin, received grants from both the City of Tucson and Pima County in 2007 to fund the study, design and construction of affordable, sustainable homes for low-income families in south Tucson’s Barrio San Antonio. More at Archinect…
Desert Dream
Desert Dream is a website by architect and recent CRAterre graduate, Hugo Gasnier, a recipient of The Delano and Aldrich/Emerson Fellowship, documenting his journey across the expansive desert regions of the United States to study contemporary earthen architecture.
Lacey Residence
The Lacey Residence, by Jones Studio, is a 4,000 sq ft private residence located in Paradise Valley, AZ.
The site slopes in three directions; it is a desert knoll. Linear forms, assuming they are long enough, will inherently emphasize the shape of the landscape by contrasting a level parapet with the sloping topography.
Fortunately the program included a lap pool. This linear permission slip completed the third topographic axis, and finds directional purpose in its alignment with the 6 million year old Papago Peak three miles away; and the centerline of the main entry door!
According to the architects, there is a beautiful honesty in relinquishing architecture to the uncompromising reality of nature. If the intentions are sincere the architecture will only get better.
Saint Bartholomew’s Chapel
Saint Bartholomew’s Chapel, by Kevin deFreitas Architects, is located in the picturesque back country of northern San Diego County at the base of Mt. Palomar alongside the San Luis Rey River. A very small and intimate historic chapel was destroyed by wild fires that ravaged the reservation in late 2007 and only the original adobe bell tower survived, which became the anchor element in the redesign planning of the new church. The needs of the current congregation and community had changed quite a bit in the past 100 years. Though the fire destroyed a building that hosted many, many important events and celebrations, it also presented a “blank slate” opportunity to update the facility, primarily by doubling the seating capacity.
House of Earth / Woody Guthrie
“In El Rancho Grande,” by Woody Guthrie (1936; Santa Fe, N.M.), oil on board.
The legendary Woody Guthrie, an American folk singer, was also a brilliant and distinctive prose stylist, whose writing is distinguished by a homespun authenticity, deep-seated purpose and remarkable ear for dialect. These attributes are on vivid display in Guthrie’s long-lost “House of Earth,” his only fully realized, but yet unpublished, novel written as a direct response to the Dust Bowl. In December 1936 the rambling troubadour had an epiphany while busking for tips in New Mexico. He’d traveled there after a treacherous duster whacked the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa, where he’d been living in poverty. While in New Mexico, Guthrie became transfixed by an adobe hacienda’s sturdy rain spouts and soil-straw bricks, a simple yet solid weatherproof structure unlike most of his Texan friends’ homes, which were poorly constructed with flimsy wooden boards and cheap nails.
An immediate convert, Guthrie purchased a nickel pamphlet, “Adobe or Sun-Dried Brick for Farm Buildings,” from the United States Department of Agriculture. The manual instructed poor rural folk on building adobe homes from the cellar up. All an amateur needed was a home-brew of clay loam, straw and water. Guthrie promoted this U.S.D.A. guide with wild-eyed zeal. Adobes, he boasted, would endure the Dust Bowl better than wooden aboveground structures that were vulnerable to wind, snow, dust and termites. If sharecroppers and tenant farmers could only own a piece of land — even the uncultivable territory of arroyos and red rocks — they could build a “house of earth” that would protect them from dirt blowing in through cracks in the walls.
Read more in an article Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp in the New York Times