El X Congreso Internacional de Arquitectura de Tierra

El X Congreso Internacional de Arquitectura de Tierra tendrá lugar los días 27, 28 y 29 de septiembre, en Cuenca de Campos, provincia de Valladolid. El día 27 el congreso comenzará en Valladolid, en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura. El 28 y el 29 nos desplazaremos desde Valladolid a Cuenca de Campos. Se disfrutará de una visita al laboratorio y un taller de tierra a cargo de José María Sastre. El grupo TIERRA os anima a participar en el congreso, como asistentes y sobretodo presentando ponencias, con el objeto de poner en común nuestros conocimientos.

www5.uva.es/grupotierra/2013xcongreso.html

EBUK 2014: Earth Building United Kingdom Conference

The 2014 EBUK conference “Training in Earth Building: from design to construction” will be held in Norwich on 14th February 2014. The broad conference theme includes education and training in building with earth, training in the structural and thermal design of earth buildings, training in safe and reliable construction methods and in the appropriate use of earth as a building material. The conference will showcase design, construction, conservation and research in the UK. Papers and presenters will engage with the conference theme and broader context of building with earth in the UK.

www.ebuk.uk.com

SIACOT Chile 2013

El 13° Seminario Iberoamericano de Arquitectura y Construcción con Tierra (SIACOT) Valparaíso 2013, promovido por la Red Iberoamericana PROTERRA y organizado por el instituto profesional Duoc UC de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile a través de su carrera de Restauración Patrimonial, tiene como finalidad reunir a los científicos, profesionales y técnicos que trabajan en torno al tema de la arquitectura, conservación y construcción con tierra, interesados por los amplios potenciales de este material. Se trata de una oportunidad de difusión y discusión, donde se evaluarán el estado actual de la investigación científica, de los proyectos, e innovaciones tecnológicas en marcha, así como los avances globales de la difusión de esta temática.

www.siacotchile2013.cl

Kerpic’13

The third International Conference on kerpic’13 – New Generation Earthen Architecture: Learning from Heritage, to be held on 11-14 September 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey. The focus of the conference has evolved from new generation of earthen architecture, environment and health care, towards disaster prevention. We hope that it will bring together the related disciplines of architects and engineers, on material, construction, marketing and environmental science to create database, technology watch and strategy.

A workshop will be organized on site where all the participants can take part. Social and cultural program will offer an interesting historical tour and a distinguished dinner will welcome you. Post Congress program will be a tour to various sites of Turkey. Fore more information visit http://www.kerpic.org/2013/

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/

Stone Spray Project

Stone Spray Project from Stone Spray on Vimeo.

The Stone Spray Project is a revolutionary robotic construction method which uses soil as the base material and a liquid binder to solidify the soil granules. And uses a jet spray system to deposit the mix of soil and binder, for constructing architectural shapes.

Stone Spray is a project by architects Petr Novikov, Inder Shergill and Anna Kulik. The project is done in the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and supervised by Marta Male-Alemany, Jordi Portell and Miquel Lloveras. With professional advisors: Santigo Martin from Vortica and Guillem Camprodon from Fab Lab Bcn.

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