Architecture, Design, and Culture using of mud, clay, soil, dirt & dust.
The Redding Residence, designed by Kendle Design Collaborative, is an 8,300-square-foot home located in a gated Scottsdale, Arizona community. The house has won the prestigious Golden Nugget award for custom homes from the Pacific Coast Builders Conference and was featured on the Arizona AIA tour of homes this spring.
The secret of a successful sandcastle could aid the revival of an ancient eco-friendly building technique, according to research led by Durham University. Researchers, led by experts at Durham’s School of Engineering, have carried out a study into the strength of rammed earth, which is growing in popularity as a sustainable building method.
Front Range Earth Architecture: Why and Why Not?, written by Michael Shernick, is a paper that looks at the history and viability of earth architecture on Colorado’s Front Range. Click here to download the paper in PDF format.
Photo: Jacob Ehrenberg, Copyright © 2009 National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
British artist, Andy Goldsworthy, is planning to produce a work using 4 to 5ft (1.2 to 1.5m) “stones” made from objects embedded in rammed earth. The stones will eventually disintegrate to reveal whatever material he decides to leave inside each one. Each stone will be made with earth containing materials and objects. These will be incorporated into each stone as it is being constructed and might be rocks, branches, bones, tools, seeds, clothes, beach debris or anything else.
The project is reminiscent of Smiljan Radic’s Casa del Carbonero. This is not Goldsworthy’s first foray into earth art. His project, Clay Wall, is a large clay plastered wall that uses human hair from his home village as a binder.
Church of the Holy Cross
Interior
After years of waiting, the historic rammed earth Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg is ready to begin renovations. The church, built between 1850 and 1852, was declared a national landmark in 1978. The building is of particular historic significance because of its “unusual construction of rammed earth known as pise de terre.”
SIREWALL® has updated ancient rammed earth processes with a new global standard for durable, healthy and energy efficient buildings and spaces. SIREWALLs are Stabilized, Insulated, Rammed Earth walls. SIREWALL homes and buildings are constructed with a matrix of local soils strengthened with rebar and a small percentage of cement that surround a core of insulation. A typical SIREWALL is 18? to 24? thick, with 4? of rigid insulation hidden in the centre of the wall. From a dream home or cottage to a winery or cultural centre, SIREWALL builds beautiful walls with timeless distinction.
SIREWALL, the creation of an acclaimed local green building company and recipient of a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture, will be offering introductory courses on Stabilized, Insulated, Rammed Earth (SIRE) this spring and summer.
The Bardessono eco-resort is Napa Valley’s newest luxury hotel. It a host of green building strategies including rammed earth walls, grey and black water treatment systems, and solar and geothermal energy. Completed just seven weeks ago by eco-developer Phil Sherburne and architect Ron Mitchell, the project is currently pursuing LEED platinum certification. [ via Inhabit.com ]
Notable rammed earth building Martin Rauch, with the assistance of architect Roger Boltshauser recently completed his own rammed earth home in Schlins, Austria. The house which was finished 2008 reacts in its position and in its character directly to the topographic gradient of the slim plot and its genuine landscape context: A monolithic structure becomes a sculptural bloc, an abstract and artificial nature pressed upward from the underlying earth.
The Monier residence is a wood and rammed earth structure utilizes a variety of sustainable systems to produce its own energy and regulate its climate. The building is situated on a 4-acre site in Perth, West Australia and comprises 3 bedrooms and 2,500 square feet. Ackert Architecture designed the award winning structure “as a demonstration project to show how alternative energy and passive systems could be integrated to create a self sufficient home.”
To introduce a hands-on understanding of materials, 12 advanced design students designed and constructed a rammed-earth bench in the Goldsmith Hall Courtyard. The rammed-earth investigation was one of three class investigations that explored the nature of materials in response to particular sites.