The Jahili Fort built in 1898 in Al Ain is now at the centre of an exciting conservation, restoration and development project that will preserve the values of this historic building whilst transforming the site into an active visitor destination.
Bousillage Construction
The Gaudet House c. 1830, Lutcher, Louisiana
Bousillage, or bouzillage, a hybrid mud brick/cob/wattle and daub technique is a mixture of clay and Spanish moss or clay and grass that is used as a plaster to fill the spaces between structural framing and particularly found in French Vernacular architecture of Louisiana of the early 1700s. A series of wood bars (barreaux), set between the posts, helped to hold the plaster in place. Bousillage, molded into bricks, was also used as infilling between posts; then called briquette-entre-poteaux. The bousillage formed a solid mud wall that was plastered and then painted. The bousillage also formed a very effective insulation.
French Acadienne house in Lyon, France
The tradition was brought to New Orleans from France by the Acadienne (Cajun). The technique also has Naive American influences. This paper describes how “When the French built in Louisiana, their earliest houses (maison) were of this frame structure, but with the post in the ground (poteaux en terre). Sometimes the post were placed close together palisade fashion (cabane). This was a technique used by local Indians. The Indians infilled the cracks between the posts with a mixture of mud and retted Spanish moss. The French did likewise and called this mixture “bousillage”. The first framed structures were covered with horizontal cypress boards (madriers). The roof (couverture) frame was finished with cypress bark, shakes, boards, or palmetto thatch. All of these earliest structures had dirt floors and were usually only one room deep and two rooms wide separated by a fireplace.”
New Mexico Earth Workshops
Arches, Domes and Vaults
Arches, Domes and Vaults starts Monday, June 9. Anselmo Jaramillo (blog) instructs and leads construction of a 10- or 12-foot diameter adobe dome on a small adobe building to be built in Chimayo, NM, at Marisela’s. Dorm rooms available at the College in El Rito about 30 miles away. Camping in Anselmo’s fields a couple of miles from the worksite. Tuition costs about $150 for NM residents and $300 for non-residents. College admission, class registration, dorm arrangements through Donald Martinez, donmart@nnmc.edu, 505-581-4120 or call Quentin at 505-581-4156.
Natural Plaster and Floor Workshop
Natural Plaster and Floor Workshop takes place in LanderLand, Kingston, New Mexico June 28-29 with instruction on Earth Plaster, Lime Plaster, Earthen Floor and Natural Clay Paint(Aliz). Please come join then and learn the fundamentals of clay and lime for your natural home. Please check out http://www.LanderLand.com for more information. If you have any questions please feel free to contact Tom and Satomi Lander at 575-895-5029.
Tarrawarra Museum of Art
Intended to emerge powerfully from the landscape this ultra modern gallery displays the talents of Melbourne architect Allan Powell. Almost like an earthworks sculpture that can be read as an artefact, the TarraWarra Musem of Art in Yarra Glen is a monument to modernism. Allan Powell has constructed a simple shape with the effect of a half built or buried building, which confounds the eye and engages the senses. The stunning tan and clay coloured structure rises out of the green vines of the Yarra Valley creating an unexpected vision in the valley. Sensually curved around the site, the building is primarily of dressed stone and rendered walls, coloured rendered concrete walls, and rammed earth walls, and the architect has achieved the feeling that ‘ this building is of the earth’. Visitors to this new gallery are convinced that the complex is of handcrafted natural materials and that each of the columns is different. TarraWarra Museum of Art has been entered into Institutional new category of the architecture awards. [ Download PDF ]
Tecnobarro and Quincha Metálica
Usualmente, cuando se habla de construcción con tierra cruda, se piensa inmediatamente en la construcción con “adobe”, sin embargo ambos términos no son sinónimos: el adobe es una de las tantas técnicas de construcción con tierra. Entre algunas de ellas destacan las tradicionales y más utilizadas en nuestro país, como lo son el tapial y la quincha, y otras técnicas mixtas nuevas, como el denominado tecnobarro y la quincha metálica.
Library and Archive at Douai Abbey
Architect David Richmond & Partners and structural engineer Price & Myers are creating a rammed earth wall using local soil for a new library and archive at Douai Abbey. The proposed 300mm-thick, 2.7m-tall earth walls, which will be built on a 100mm-tall concrete plinth, offer the right amount of thermal mass to ensure a stable internal temperature. When built, it will be the only library in the UK to use rammed earth technology. It is also the first time that either the architect or the structural engineer have worked with rammed earth.
The Earthen Homes of Yongding County
Photo by Barbara Koh/New York Times
From China’s Fujian coast, it’s a grinding drive up narrow roads through villages built around exhausted coal mines to reach the remote mountains of Yongding. Morning mist clings to the slopes of dense trees and brush. Below, in a valley, rests an eerie collection of beige cylindrical structures, one as enormous as a football field. This sci-fi scenery is peculiar to southern China and concentrated in Yongding County. The bizarre edifices, which the Chinese say foreign surveillance has, over the years, mistaken for missile silos and U.F.O.’s, are decades- and centuries-old and made of rammed earth. They are still homes to the Hakka, a Han Chinese nomadic group.
Koudougou Central Market, Burkina Faso
The impact of Koudougou’s Central Market, designed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) / Laurent Séchaud / Pierre Jequier for the Koudougou Municipality and completed in 2005, is twofold: at the urban scale, it reinforces and enhances the fabric of a mid-sized town, providing a monumental civic space for commercial and social exchange. On the level of construction, it introduces simple and easily assimilated improvements to a traditional material – stabilised earth – which allow it to achieve its full aesthetic and environmental potential. By using blocks of compressed earth, the market not only demonstrates the superior climactic performance of the local building material, but also shows how humble earth blocks can be used to create a sophisticated pattern language of vaults, domes and arches.
The market is the third of its type to be built under the direction of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in cooperation with the Programme de Développement des Villes Moyennes of the Burkina Faso government, which aims to strengthen the country’s mid-sized towns through building commercial infrastructures. The market was the result of a truly participatory process that brought together and engaged the entire community in the site selection, design and construction of the market as well as its continuing use. A 1:1 prototype of a typical retail space was constructed which helped facilitate communication between the different collaborators, simultaneously allowing refinement of the design, development of innovative construction techniques and practical training of the local masons.
The Architecture of Yemen
The result of nearly two decades of research, The Architecture of Yemen: From Yafi to Hadramut
Refreshingly, the book moves out of the more familiar major cities into the hinterlands and explores areas that could be said to be the last strongholds of vernacular Arab architecture. The author, Salma Samar Damluji, was allowed to visit locations and sites previously closed or unfamiliar to architects and foreigners. As a result of this privileged access, the text and images combine to convey unique insights and viewpoints: those of the master builders and house owners who actually create and inhabit the buildings. In addition to approximately 700 colour images and architectural drawings, a unique glossary of over 900 terms complements the text.
Ontario Rammed Earth House
The unusual “Mud House” house was constructed in King City, Ontario in 1937 by Blair Burrows, a remarkable woman architect from Toronto, using only local materials and without cutting down any trees. She built the house entirely by hand, of pisé de terre (rammed earth). Original features include the two-foot thick, rot-free walls and a monumental hearth.