Architecture, Art, Design, and Culture using of mud, clay, soil, dirt & dust.
Inspired by the work of Mexican architect Juan Jose Santibañez, who helped twenty women in difficult living conditions to build their own homes in Oaxaca twenty years ago, Portuguese architecture firm Blaanc Borderless and Mexican studio CaeiroCapurso have recently launched Adobe for Women.
Mud Hall is a project initiated by Harvard University’s 2012 Loeb Fellows to promote awareness about rammed earth construction and to challenge conventional thinking about green building. Raw earth is the most plentiful and sustainable building material on the planet, yet architects rarely incorporate it into their designs. To demonstrate the potential of mud and clay for everyday buildings, the Loeb Fellows are enlisting 25 students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to construct a rammed earth structure at the entrance to the school’s celebrated Gund Hall. Mud Hall is meant to offer an alternative to the current orthodoxy about sustainable construction.
In addition to the rammed earth installations, an exhibit demonstrating materials, techniques and buildings that demonstrate contemporary earth architecture were presented.
For more information visit the Mud Hall blog, which will chronicle the evolution of the Mud Hall project, and offer detailed information about the rammed earth process.
The Hilltop House, a large rammed earth structure built at the address of 1300 Rhode Island Avenue, NE, in Washington, DC in 1773. Before its demolition in 1956, which made way for subsidized housing, it was the oldest extant house in the Washington DC area. The house served as the interim White House for President James Monroe after the British burned the official residence.
An attempt was apparently made to bring raze the building with a wrecking ball after World War I failed after the ball proved ineffective, prompting the owners let the house stand. It was then renovated and it served as an embassy for some time.
The photo is from A quantitative comparison of rammed earth and sun-cured adobe buildings by Richard Hudson Clough and published by The University of New Mexico Press as a Masters Thesis in 1950. Clough went on to become the Dean of Engineering at UNM and wrote the definitive texts on construction contracting.
[ Research Credit: Quentin Wilson ]
Photography: ©Harrison Photography
Saint Bartholomew’s Chapel, designed by Kevin deFreitas Architects, was constructed to replace a very small and intimate historic chapel that was ravaged by wildfires in 2007. From that fire, only the original adobe bell tower survived, which became the anchor element in the redesign planning.
Photography: ©Harrison Photography
The new design was conceived to reverently knit together “past” and comfortable traditions, while acknowledging and offering something relevant to current and future generations. Thus, emulating or recreating the past literally was not a project goal. Drawing from a limitless well of Native American and Catholic symbols and metaphors, design elements in plan, section, and elevation were conceived to reference and infuse meaning into the chapel, such as the; rammed earth walls, radial walls, butterfly roof, and extensive use of locally sourced materials.
[ via: archdaily.com ]
Adobe for Women is a non-profit association, founded in 2011, whose goal is the recovery and education of earth construction techniques; this is our contribution to a more human and sustainable use of space and the planet’s resources. The goal of this Project is to build 20 sustainable houses in the indigenous village of San Juan Mixtepec, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
The houses are intended for 20 women in difficult circumstances who will participate in the building process. They will slowly appropriate their future home and simultaneously re find their self esteem, work abilities and hope that will transform the spaces into safe, caring places for their families.
The houses are energy efficient and built with local materials such as adobe and bamboo.
The Juana Briones House, a rare example of encajonado construction, parts of which were built in 1844, has been completely torn down by property owner Jaim Nulman, who fought off historic preservationists, latino activists, and descendants of Briones for years. Feminists joined in the struggle for the home’s preservation as well. Jeanne McDonnell, biographer of Juana Briones, stated that historic buildings associated with women are more likely to be demolished than those associated with men.
Founded in 1998, Kleiwerks International is a non-profit organization and a global network of innovative design specialists collaborating with communities to create ecological and social resilience.
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.
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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
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.