Casa de pau a pique, or a bahareque house in Brazil.
Bahareque is the Spanish name for what is known in English as wattle and daub, a method of building where wet loam is applied to an interwoven mesh of twigs, branches, bamboo, etc. Specifically, bahareque (also known as quincha) is a subset of the thrown loam technique, where the wet loam is applied by hand onto the organic skeleton. The loam of earth (a combination of clay, silt, and soil) and aggregate, usually straw. Bahareque describes a wide range of building techniques and types, and can be separated out into various local traditions across South America.
Traditional bahareque wall.
Originally combined with palm frond roofs, bahareque was often topped with tiled roofs after European colonization. It can be used in combination with other earthen architecture technologies, as seen in the image below.
Solar do Major Novaes, constructed with adobe on the lower floor and wattle and daub on the upper floor.
Bahareque is currently being explored as a low-cost housing typology. There are questions as to how well it can withstand seismic activity, but it is often proposed as a housing solution for earthquake stricken regions. Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Brazil have all introduced engineered bahareque (or cement bahareque) following devastating earthquakes.
In Ecuador, where the matrix and frame for bahareque architecture is made of guadua bamboo, one of the strongest bamboo subspecies, there is promising contemporary research proving that bahareque is superior to masonry architecture both for earthquake safety and from a sustainability standpoint.
Bahareque houses designed by ARUP and REDES, before the plaster is applied to the bamboo matrix.Construction documents of bahareque houses designed by ARUP.
TECLA House, designed by MCA and engineered by WASP.
The TECLA House is a collaboration between Mario Cucinella Architects (MCA) and World’s Advanced Saving Project (WASP). The name “TECLA” is a portmanteau of “technology” and “clay,” and references Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, specifically the fictional city of Thekla, were construction never ceases.
Massimo Moretti, WASP founder.Mario Cucinella, MCA founder.
The materials used in the TECLA House include local clay and soil, water, rice husks, and a binder (which constitutes less than 5% of the total mixture). This makes it a true “0km building,” meaning the materials are sourced directly from the site on which the dwelling is built. WASP, an Italian 3D printing firm, brought their technological expertise to the project. Founded in 2012 by Massimo Moretti, WASP unveiled Crane WASP, their flagship 3D printer, in 2018. Mario Cucinella, the principal architect on this project, designed a morphology inspired by the potter wasp and based on the research of the School of Sustainability (SOS), Cucinella’s post-graduate school.
Sketch for the TECLA House by Mario Cucinella.
Interior view of the TECLA House.
TECLA was built with 350 layers of 3D printed earth. The configuration of the walls was dictated by the humidity and temperature of the climate, and SOS made several infill case studies optimized for different geographical locations.
Detail of the TECLA printing process.Diagram of the infill configuration of TECLA.
Crane WASP imagined as a modular system of infinite extent.
The TECLA House is the first dwelling built using multiple 3D printers working simultaneously and collaboratively. This project was the proof of concept for the Crane WASP. WASP claims that Crane WASP is an infinite 3D printer, whose print area of 50 square meters can be extended in a modular fashion to cover a printing area of arbitrary size.
The two Italian firms built their prototypical TECLA house in Massa Lombarda, Italy, but the idea is that the house can be reproduced anywhere. WASP advertises their “Maker Economy Starter Kit,” which can be purchased online and fits inside a single shipping container. TECLA can be reproduced in “200 hours of printing, […] 150 km of extrusion, 60 cubic meters of natural materials for an average consumption of less than 6 kW.” Interested parties can also purchase an entire Crane WASP rig for €160,000.
Originally built during the 13th century CE, the Great Mosque of Djenne was rebuilt in 1906, and remains the largest mud brick building in the world to this day. It is located in the town of Djenne, which is situated near the Bani River in Mali. It is considered the preeminent example of Sudano-Sahelian architecture, and served as a center of Islamic knowledge for centuries before it fell into ruins. The Old Towns of Djenne were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, including various other mud buildings and archaeological sites in addition to the Great Mosque. The Great Mosque has been featured on Mali’s national emblem since it was adopted in 1961.
Photo taken by Edmond Fortier in 1906.
The Great Mosque is located in the city center of Djenne, adjacent to the marketplace. It is built on a raised platform or mound of earth 3m tall, and measuring 75m by 75m. This platform protects the Great Mosque from damage when the nearby Bani River floods. Rain does damage the mosque, though usually only causing cracks that are addressed through regular maintenance. Unusually heavy rain can cause greater damage, as was the case in 2009 when the upper portion of the south tower of the east facade collapsed. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture funded repairs in 2010, and the mosque has been fully restored as of the present day.
La fete de creppisage, the annual festival when the Great Mosque is fully rendered and repaired.
The Great Mosque is maintained through an annual festival, “La fete de crepissage,” where community members participate in the rendering of the building. The mud plaster used in this annual process is mixed in large pits, and left to cure and ferment for several days before it is ready to use. Young men and boys climb the toron, the rodier palm clusters protruding from the facade of the mosque that serve as scaffolding, while the young women and girls bring water to aid in plastering. More senior masons observe the young men as they smear a new layer of mud plaster over the mosque, and later check the work to ensure that it is smooth and even. The festival begins with a race to see who can bring the first bowl of mud plaster to the mosque, and ends with the workers washing the plaster off in the remaining water.
Detail view of the exterior wall of the Great Mosque.
The Great Mosque is constructed entirely from mud, excepting the toron. Mud forms the bricks, the mortar, and the plaster with which the mosque was originally built. These bricks are made of banco, a combination of grain husks and the traditional West African brown mud that forms much of the earthen architecture of the region. The qibla, or prayer wall, of the mosque faces east, toward the central square of Djenne and toward Mecca. The qibla is roughly a meter thick and punctuated by three main towers, with small minarets at either end. The wall derives additional support from the eighteen pilasters, each ending in a conical pinnacle.
East elevation of the Great Mosque.Plan of the Great Mosque.
The prayer hall is directly behind the qibla, and takes up roughly half of the interior of the mosque. The other half is an open court which is surrounded on three sides by galleries with pointed archways, one of which is reserved for women. The roof of the prayer hall is made of more rodier palm clusters, which run crossways, and are covered in mud plaster. It is supported by interior walls.
Interior of one of the galleries of the Great Mosque.
In 2005, the Zamani Project spatially documented the Great Mosque, producing 3D scans and GIS analysis of the area. Play with the 3D model produced by the Zamani Project here. Watch an animated tour of the model here.
Santa Fe is famous in part for a particular architectural style, an adobe look that’s known as Pueblo Revival. This aesthetic combines elements of indigenous pueblo architecture and New Mexico’s old Spanish missions, resulting in mostly low, brown buildings with smooth edges. Buildings in the city’s historic districts have to follow a number of design guidelines so that they conform with the dominant style. Deviating from those aesthetics can stir up a lot of controversy.
But this adherence to the “Santa Fe Style” hasn’t always been the norm. For a time, there was actually a powerful push to “Americanize” the city’s built environment. Then, over a century ago, a group of preservationists laid out a vision for the look and feel of Santa Fe architecture, and in the process dramatically transformed the town.
Arquitectura Tierra describes itself as the world’s first digital Instagram blog for contemporary eartharchitecture, art & technology. Visit them on Instagram
The 1st prize winning design is Sankofa House by the design team: M.A.M.O.T.H from France
The 2nd prize winner is Eban Aya by Atelier Koe in Senegal
The 3rd prize is awarded to Ejisu Earth House by Jason Orbe-Smith in USA.
The competition was open to recent graduates and students of architecture, design and others from around the world. The challenge was to design a single-family unit on a plot of 60 x 60 feet to be built by maximum use of earth and local labor in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The client of the design entry is the middle-income family at any township in the region. Total costs of constructing the design entry was capped at $6,000; land value was excluded from this price point. The competition was designed to: (1) to generate mud house design alternatives to be available free to everyone to appreciate, use, or improve them to generate more practical and contemporary design solutions for the region; and (2) to make possible the construction of the best design entries through building workshops to realize prototypes, as examples to the local people that mud architecture can be durable and beautiful.
The jury involved a preselection jury and grand jury by use of judging criteria involving functionality, aesthetics and technical matters. Twenty top finalists were chosen by the Preselection Jury of architects, professors and administrators with relevant expertise, which were forwarded to the Grand Jury of architecture professors and others who are established in earth architecture. From the Top 20 Design Entries, three prize-winning designs were selected. Prizes for first, second and third place consist of a commemorative plaque and a choice of cash reward or construction of winning design in Ghana. Every design team of the Top 20 Design Entries receives a certificate of recognition.
What is next?
BUILDING WORKSHOPS: THE PROTOTYPING CHALLENGE
Nka Foundation is issuing a challenge to builders, architecture professors and architects worldwide who know how architecture is localized, uses the means and the materials available in the site to create a friendly building to the environment. Join us as a workshop director or a participant to realize the winning designs from our 2014 Mud House Design competition in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Each prototyping workshop will run for about 10 weeks. Participants can join at any time and participate for a minimum of 1 month. Students can use the workshop opportunity to fulfil the academic requirements for their stage/internship, thesis, or volunteer just for learning-by-doing on a vernacular architecture project. Here are all submitted design entries: http://nkaprojects.boards.net/thread/30/submitted-entries-1st-list Please, take a look!
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.
The Terra [In]cognita (Earthen architecture in Europe) project was created to raise public awareness of the heritage and contemporary application of earthen architecture through the Outstanding Earth Architecture in Europe Award in the following categories:
Buildings with archaeological, historical or architectural interest
Buildings s subjects of a remarkable and relevant intervention (restoration, rehabilitation or extension)
