The Elser House by Richard Eribes & Mary Hardin protects from the scorching midday and afternoon heat with a generous roof shades the house and creates places of respite in the courts and patios. When the monsoons come, rain gathers on the roof and plunges off above the patio in a single stream, to be captured in a stone basin below.
Casa Grande
Perhaps nowhere is the blending of modernity and the tradition of earth building more evident than at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. Casa Grande was constructed between ad 1200-1450 by the Native American Hohokam near Phoenix, Arizona. In 1928, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of Frederick Law Olmsted the landscape architect most famous for the earthwork of Central Park in New York City, was acting as an adviser to the National Park Service. The desire by the National Park service was to create a shelter that both protected the ruins, while allowing them to have hierarchical presence. The Olmsted Jr. design was completed on December 12, 1932.
Design+Research+Build at the University of Arizona
The Design+Research+Build program at the University of Arizona has constructed several projects in rammed earth. Visit the programs website.
Rammed earth constructions: Trans-cultural research in the Sonoran Desert
A case study illustrating a series of university/community collaborations leading from research idea, to full-scale improvisation in a Design/Build Studio at the University of Arizona (UA) School of Architecture (SoA), to a significant application in the Gila River Pima community of southern Arizona.
Mii amo Spa
This 34,000 square-foot spa facility in Sedona, Arizona by Gluckman Mayner Architects is comprised of a main treatment building and six freestsanding residential buildings. The main building’s five adobe brick clad towers contain treatment rooms and anchor the complex in the landscape. See more of this commercial project at www.gluckmanmayner.com
Univision Television Studio and Headquarters
The Univision Television Studio and Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona by Swaback Partners
Quentin Branch Rammed Earth
Quentin Branch, the rammed earth builder for architects Rick Joy and Jones Studio, has a very informative website that includes photos, workshop offerings and video.
House of Earth and Light
The House of Earth and Light, a private residence designed by Iraq-born, Phoenix Architect Marwan Al-Sayed uses a 3-layer fabric roof to bring tension and lightness to the thick poured gypsum walls. Computer renderings of the building show the proposed quality of the architecture. More information can be found here in an article by the Industrial Fabrics Association International (.pdf format).
Church in Tucson
Old Adobe Church, Old Tucson, Tucson Mtn. Park. Tucson Arizona. Date unknown.
Ehrenberg
Photo of Ehrenberg, Arizona, once the largest town in Yuma County and chief distributing port for Arizona on the Colorado River, circa 1908