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JONES STUDIO HOUSES: Sensual Modernism

Jones Studio Homes: Sensual Modernism is a self-imposed limited look at the 40-year-plus career of Eddie Jones. Almost unheard of outside the southwest United States, Jones has quietly accumulated a body of work ranging beyond residential design to include major federal projects impacting the edges of America… to be featured in a soon to be published monograph!

Supported by Aaron Betsky’s insightful forward, plus an enlightening interview with Vladimir Belogolovsky, and comments from many of his famous colleagues, Jones summarizes his lifelong dance with architecture through the personal stories embedded in each house. Refusing to repeat himself, the work tests the reality of gravity on a diverse spectrum of interpretive vernacular responses to climate, landscape and function. Although designed by the same hand, the forms vary as much as the choice of materials. Rammed earth, concrete, wood and metal are explored together and separately yet remain subordinate to Jones’ fascination with glass.

Utilizing photographs, hand-drawings and first-person accounts, the motivations and joy of being an architect are expressed by an exceptional whole informed by many ordinary parts.

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Stuccoed in Time at 99% Invisible

Santa Fe is famous in part for a particular architectural style, an adobe look that’s known as Pueblo Revival. This aesthetic combines elements of indigenous pueblo architecture and New Mexico’s old Spanish missions, resulting in mostly low, brown buildings with smooth edges. Buildings in the city’s historic districts have to follow a number of design guidelines so that they conform with the dominant style. Deviating from those aesthetics can stir up a lot of controversy.

But this adherence to the “Santa Fe Style” hasn’t always been the norm. For a time, there was actually a powerful push to “Americanize” the city’s built environment. Then, over a century ago, a group of preservationists laid out a vision for the look and feel of Santa Fe architecture, and in the process dramatically transformed the town.

Learn more about the controversies and conundrums of what some call Santa Fake, the history of adobe in Santa Fe, and the how preservation and tradition have been at odds with each other at 99% Invisible.

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Majara Residence

Iranian practice ZAV Architects drew on the colourful landscape of the island of Hormuz for this holiday community that is housed in around 200 brightly colored domes overlooking the Persian Gulf.

The project is a multitude of small-scale domes built with the superadobe technique of Nader Khalili, the innovative and simple technique using earth and sand packed into bags. Domes are familiar structures in the region. Their small scale makes them compatible with the building capabilities of local craftsmen and unskilled workers, which have been prepared for this project with previous smaller projects. Today they are trained master superadobe masons, as if Nader Khalili multiplied exponentially.

Learn more at Dezeen, ArchDaily

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H2OS

The H2OS project, or Open Source Prototype House for Eco-Villages in Senegal, is a prototype house constructed of compressed earth block, that can harvest and store water supplies for all domestic uses (drinking, cooking, washing, irrigation) and to integrate the scarce water resources in a few artificial walls. The project relies on ancient knowledge such as how to harvest rain water or how to ventilate rooms while incorporating up to date technologies for energy production from renewable sources. Learn more here.

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Building with Cob

 

Building with Cob (2006) by Adam Weismann & Katy Bryce

Before founding a world leading clay plaster company, Clayworks Ltd, Adam Weismann and Katy Bryce specialised in earth building, with a particular love of Cob. The couple built many cob structures, with clients including HRH Prince of Wales, and finished the exteriors in Lime and the interiors in Clay. It was during this time that Adam and Katy developed a particular interest in clay plaster finishes. Their book, Building with Cob: A Step-by-Step Guide (Sustainable Building) shows how to apply this ancient technique in a wide variety of contemporary situations, covering everything from design and siting, mixing, building walls, fireplaces, ovens and floors, lime and other natural finishes, and gaining planning permission and building regulation approval. It also explains in detail how to sensitively restore an old cob structure.

Building with Cob was described by David Pearson (Author of The New Natural House Book) as ‘An inspiring vision and practical guide to one of the most versatile building materials’.

Keith Hall, Editor of Building for a Future magazine, concluded ‘This has got to be the most practical and beautifully illustrated book on earth building every published’.

The highly illustrated book, abundant with photographs, has step by step instructions for creating cob structures as well as information on natural finishes including lime plasters and home-made clay finishes. It also contains advice on how to construct a cob building that complies with modern building standards and guidance on restoring and repairing old cob structures.

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Polluted Pottery

While earth, the material and technology that comprises the ground beneath our feet, is considered the most earth-friendly of all materials, it is also a material whose properties can be polluted by man-made and natural disasters. Artists have addressed this by fashioning objects made from the polluted ground.

Swedish artist Hilda Hellström created food storage jars made of radioactive earth from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster area in Japan. To do so, she contacted the last person still living inside the evacuation zone, Naoto Matsumura, and collected soil from his rice fields that can’t be farmed due to contamination.

Similarly, design studio Unknown Fields Division has used mud from a toxic lake in Inner Mongolia to create a set of three Ming-style vases.

The London studio, headed up by Kate Davies and Liam Young, collaborated with ceramicist Kevin Callaghan to form the three radioactive vases from the toxic waste generated during the production of electronic devices like smartphones and laptops, as well as a short film.

“Rare earth minerals are some of the fundamental ingredients in contemporary electronics,” said Young. “For example, a smartphone has eight different rare earths in it. Everything from the material used in its memory to the red-coloured pixels of its screen and the polish used on its glass.”

Read more about Hilda Hellström at Dezeen.

Read more about the Radioactive Ming Vases at Dezeen.

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Macha Village Center / Oneartharch architect

Construction with earthen materials, as one of the oldest traditional technology, was widely employed all over China during the past thousands of years. According to the latest statistics, at least 60 million people in China are still living in various traditional rammed-earth dwellings, most of which are located in poor and rural regions.

The Macha Village Center, designed by One Earth Architecture, is located in Huining County, Gansu Province, borrows the conventional yard form and local building traditions of the region to create a courtyard that is enclosed by four different height of earth buildings that faces the eastern valley. Al building materials and earth are taken from the local area to blend in the local landscape in a natural way.

More information at Archdaily.

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Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst


As environmental pressures continue to increase and concerns about resource scarcity continue to grow, a number of prominent architectural thinkers are returning to one of the world’s oldest construction methods: earth building. Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst, by Anna Heringer, Lindsay Blair Howe, and Martin Rauch, showcases innovative thinking about materials and the potential for earth building to replace more environmentally damaging, resource-intensive materials like concrete. What economic, environmental, and social conditions, the book asks, would be necessary for an upscaling of earth to occur?

Presenting a wide range of built and unbuilt projects and outlining strategies that can be implemented to adapt the use of earth to each unique culture and context, Upscaling Earth demonstrates groundbreaking technological innovations that highlight the advantages of this material. From worldwide availability to the possibility of comprehensive recycling, from climate-neutral production to socially just implementation, the book reveals the incredible potential of earthen architecture.

Buy Upscaling Earth: Material, Process, Catalyst at Amazon.com