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Weddle Gilmore Rammed Earth

Weddle Gilmore Black Rock Studio has developed a specialty in trailheads over its 10 years in business. The architecture firm has designed this building type for several municipalities near its Scottsdale, Arizona, base, and it has realized three for Scottsdale’s McDowell Sonoran Preserve alone.


The Gateway to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale, Arizona

The Gateway was designed to celebrate the entry and passage into the 36,400 acre McDowell Sonoran Preserve while minimizing the impact on the native desert. The Gateway is the point of access to over 45 miles of trails within the McDowell Sonoran Preserve for hiking, bicycling, and equestrian enjoyment. The project site design achieved the complete preservation of the existing network of arroyos and minimized earthwork alterations of the natural habitat. The building walls are made of rammed earth, recalling a tradition of indigenous desert building while meeting all of the performance requirements of modern use. The roof is covered in native desert cobble so that it blends into the desert when observed from the mountain trails to the east. The Gateway incorporates numerous strategies for resource conservation. An 18 KW solar system generates as much solar electricity as the Gateway consumes to realize a ‘net zero’ of energy consumption. Up to 60,000 gallons of rainwater is harvested through roof collection and storage in an underground cistern–providing 100% of the water needed for landscape irrigation.


Lost Dog Wash Trailhead, Scottsdale, Arizona

On the perimeter of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, the Lost Dog Wash Trailhead is an example of commitment to environment through its preservation of native habitat, choice of sustainable building materials, and natural resource conservation. The structures are nested into the landscape and incorporate materials that blend with the natural desert environment. The rammed earth walls of the structures utilize earth material that was excavated during foundation construction. The trailhead restrooms incorporate a composting system which minimizes water consumption and saves approximately 200,000 gallons of water annually over a conventional system.

Gray water and rainwater harvesting provides 75,000 gallons of water a year for landscape irrigation. Solar power is provided to the trailhead facilities by a roof integrated 3,000 watt solar electric array that allows the trailhead to be completely self-sufficient and independent of the electric grid.

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Vote For Earth

Abari has entered the Dell Social Innovation Competition, which operates like a business-plan competition, awarding seed funding directly to the student-led venture that best meets the judges’ criteria. Vote for their project, which seeks establish a center to design and build/prefabricate houses, schools, toilets, furniture etc. out of bamboo and earth. The center will promote traditional (and dying) construction skills by mobilizing community members and appropriating locally available materials like bamboo and earth to build modern ecological, economical and beautiful infrastructure for individuals or communities.

Registration is easy and takes 20 seconds. Vote!

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MUMEMO

Mumemo is a blog about a training course carried out in Mumemo (Maputo, Mozambique) on earth construction by two Portuguese architects, Miguel Mendes and Teresa Beirao, during May and August 2006. The project was created for the inhabitants of a new village, created as a resettlement for the victims of the massive floods in the year 2000. The course gave students a wide and solid knowledge about earthen construction and three main techniques (rammed earth, adobe, compressed earth blocs) as well as provided them with the ability to direct similar courses in other communities. During the course, a small 50m2 house was built.

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Modern Rammed Chalk


Credit: The White balance

Dan Brill Architects has designed a £50,000 extension to an Edwardian home on the outskirts of Winchester using rammed chalk. The chalk, which makes up the soil of the site was considered as it is a traditional technique in the region and because of the large amount of excavation required to accommodate the addition.


Credit: The White balance

The clients, who wanted something contemporary and innovative, appreciated rammed earth and more so the pristine appearance of the stark, white chalk walls. The material has been used in modern construction in the Pines Calyx project. It was also used in the construction of eight experimental cottages at the Department of Industrial Science and Research at Amesbury between 1919 and 1921. Construction is slated for later this year.

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Oaxaca School of Plastic Arts by Mauricio Rocha

The Oaxaca School of Plastic Arts was designed by Taller de Arquitectura—Mauricio Rocha at the request of artist Francisco Toledo, in collaboration with the Benito Juárez University. An important premise incorporated into the project was the presence on the plot of land of a Mixtec ball game, used on weekends by players.

Several campus construction project occurring at the same time made available a tremendous amount of earth, inspiring Rocha to construct several of the buildings within complex out of rammed earth. This enhanced the quality of the exterior courtyards and created a comfortable micro-climate within the building optimal for Oaxaca. Other buildings are made of stone and create a series of inhabitable terraces.

Exterior courtyards suggest a floor layout in the shape of a chessboard, where the alternation between mass and space in the walkways creates a variety of views and paths.

Read more about The Oaxaca School of Plastic Arts.

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Casa Entre Muros: A House Between Walls

The Casa Entre Muros, built in Tumbaco, Quito, Ecuador and designed by al bordE Arquitectos (David Barragán and Pascual Gangotena), was generated from the starting point: “There is always another way of doing things and another way for living”. Far from the pollution of the city, the house is set in the hillside of the Ilaló volcano in a indomitable land. It’s limited by two streams opened to the landscape of the valley. A cut in the sloping land helps to generate a platform for the project and also to get enough raw material to build the massive party walls.

The waving form as a result of this cut in the land, defines the position and order of every wall. The succession of rammed earth walls and the different heights of the roof caused the division of the house even for the activity or the user. To avoid the domino effect, the party walls break their parallelism solving the structure and strengthening the character of each space within. A long corridor is used as an element that isolates the project from their immediate neighbours and reinforces the autonomy of every space.

This architecture aims to highlight the nature of the material elements that compose it, promoting the aesthetic, formal, functional and structural qualities as well as the maximum respect of the environment.

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New Deal Rammed Earth

The rammed earth houses on Rosemary Road in Mount Olive, Alabama, were built in the 1930s. They were constructed with dirt, taken from the site, which was mixed with red-rock aggregate and tamped between wooden forms. The homes were built as part of a New Deal Resettlement Administration homestead community. The surprisingly sophisticated one-story houses, designed by architect Thomas Hibben, are reminiscent of the low-slung, prairie-style houses designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The government was not sure of the lasting quality of these rammed earth homes and required that they be located at the back of the project, so as to not be too visible if they collapsed, but all the rammed earth houses of Mount Olive are still standing today. Images of the buildings at the time of their construction can be found here.