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Pre-History Meets Modernity: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument


Casa Grande ruins 1902

Perhaps nowhere is the blending of modernity and tradition 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 1892, President Benjamin Harrison created the Casa Grande Ruin Reservation to protect the one of a kind “Casa Grande”, or Great House, thus becoming the first prehistoric and cultural site to be established in the United States.


Protective covering 1925

The significance of the Casa Grande ruins to contemporary architecture lies in the combination of a prehistoric past and the actions taken towards the building since its preservation. Many attempts had been made to preserve the structure since the ruins institutionalization and in 1903 a protective cover was built over the pre-historic earth structure. The cover was a large galvanized, corrugated iron roof with a six foot overhang supported by 10″X10″ redwood posts embedded into the ground. The entire structure was then anchored to the ground by cables attached to each corner of the structure. This act radically transformed ones perception of the ruins. For centuries it remained an abandoned, hulking mass of solidity and suddenly, the historic structure became an introverted and fragile piece of history, wrapped within the security of modernity.


Protective Canopy under construction circa 1932

In 1932 Congress appropriated funds to construct a new shelter over the ruins to protect them. 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. Because the desire by the National Park service was to allow a shelter that both protected the roof, yet allowed the ruin to have hierarchical presence it was suggested that a flat roof on a light steel frame be considered. The steel frame, it was thought, would be “as far a departure from the design and material of the ruin as can be obtained” and was meant to be seen apart from the ruin, rather than blend with it. Olmsted sketched a design for a new hip roof with a guy wire system much like that used on a circus tent, to secure the structure to the ground in order to protect from uplift of the structure due to wind.


Olmsted canopy complete 1932

Completed on December 12, 1932, the final Olmsted Jr. design was realized with the exception of the guy wires. The hip roof supported by leaning posts was consistent with Olmsted’s design and the tensile roof structure incorporated glass skylights and angled columns and stands forty-six feet from the ground to the eaves, painted sage green to harmonize with the mountains and vegetation as well as provide contrast to the ruin.


Casa Grande today

Yet, contrary to the goal of creating a hierarchical relationship with the ruins taking the foreground, the liberation of the earthen structure from the cocoon of modern materials had emerged a singular form and a new type of architecture—one fusing historical and contemporary building traditions. This creation was the beginning of a metamorphosis of modern architecture in the southwest.

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AdobeUSA 2009

The 5th Adobe Conference of the Adobe Association of the Southwest, AdobeUSA 2009, will take place May 15 and 16, 2009 in El Rito, New Mexico on the campus of co-sponsor Northern New Mexico College in Cutting Hall Auditorium.

Call for Papers Schedule:
November 15, 2008: Abstracts due. One page maximum on 8-1/2? x11? paper.
December 15, 2008: Notification of paper acceptance.
January 15, 2009: AdobeUSA begins accepting full paper submissions.
February 15, 2009: All full paper due. 7-page maximum including graphics.

Subject Categories:
Education and Technology Transfer
Heritage and Conservation/Preservation
Techniques, Materials and Their Properties (including Seismic and Thermal)
Earthbuilding in Contemporary Architecture

Submit abstracts by mail, fax or e-mail (attached as a DOC file using our template above) to:
Quentin Wilson, Speakers Committee
PO Box 426, El Rito, NM 87530
Fax: 1-505-581-9156
e-mail: qwilson@nnmc.edu

Presentation Details:
Presenters will have 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes to answer questions. Time limits will be carefully monitored. Full papers for publication must be submitted in DOC format.

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How To Build a Compressed Earth Block Home

Hallock’s Colorado-based company, Earth Block Inc, has developed an especially efficient and affordable process for earth block production. “Earthen walls have always been the best,” Hallock said during a press tour of the Baja, Mexico facility where he oversees the production of compressed earth blocks (CEBs) for construction at The Villages of Loreto Bay. Compressed earth blocks were chosen for the new resort community because they can be made economically from local materials. CEBs are also energy-efficient and durable. “Bugs don’t eat them and they don’t burn,” Hallock said. The How-To begins here.

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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.”

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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.

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Adobe Classes at the Northern New Mexico College

Anselmo Jaramillo is teaching our one-week introductory class, Build With Adobe, starting April 21. A little bit of talk, a lot of work. Adobe 147-201, CRN 21475.

Following that on Monday, April 28 is our very intensive ADOB 112-101, Arches, Domes and Vaults that runs five days a week for two weeks ending May 9. Also taught by Anselmo this will take place on the property of Alejandro Lopez on the east side of Espanola. The project will be a small vault. Alejandro already has a dome.

The two courses make a nice package.

More information on the College website www.nnmc.edu or by calling Quentin Wilson at 505-581-4156. Email Donald Martinez for registration at donmart@nnmc.edu or 505-581-4120

Another one-week introductory class begins June 2. The instructor is yet to be identified.

Another on August 18 with Kirk Higbee the instructor. Followed by Arches Domes and Vaults for two weeks beginning Aug 25 and bracketing Labor Day. Taught by Q Wilson. This will be vault in
Abiquiu which we think will be the largest vault ever built west of the Rio Grande, east of the Chama River, South of the Canadian Border and north of Española.

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New Orleans Marine Hospital 1867 was Rammed Earth


The all-iron Marine Hospital, innovative in its day, yet doomed by construction costs. Photo / Theodore Lilienthal

A new book of essays, New Orleans 1867: Photographs by Theodore Lilienthal, on rediscovered photographs of New Orleans in 1867, written by the curator of architecture and design at the MIT Museum, shows how the city tried to rebuild its economy and retrieve its prestige in the aftermath of war. One of the photographs is of a vast, domed building under construction at the edge of the city turned out to be the Marine Hospital, New Orleans’ version of Boston’s Big Dig. The iron building, insulated with rammed earth, was thought to be lighter and therefore better suited to swampy local conditions, as well as fireproof. The proposal was innovative but the technology was costly, a sinkhole of federal money. Never completed, eventually demolished, the hospital was one of the most advanced buildings of its time, but it has been forgotten today.

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Architect Nader Khalili Memorial

On Saturday March 29th, from 11:00 am throughout the afternoon, Nader Khalili’s surviving family and students invite all who were his friends and supporters to remember and celebrate his life, words and works, at his Cal-Earth Institute, in Hesperia, California, amongst his visionary architecture. Rather than flowers, please send a contribution to a charity which helps the poor and refugees, in his name. [ directions | previously ]

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Nader Khalili Dies at 72


Nader Khalili


Superadobe Structure

Iranian-born architect and author, Nader Khalili, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008. Khalili was known for his invention of an Earthbag Construction technique called Super Adobe, which use sand bags, mud and barbed wire to build emergency shelters in areas affected by natural and man-made disasters. His books, Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own and Racing Alone document his life of searching for a method to fire mud houses and turn them to stone by firing and glazing an entire building after it is constructed from clay-earth on site. He is the founder of The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, whose scope spans technical innovations published by NASA for lunar base construction, to design and development of housing for the world’s homeless for the United Nations.