Natural Building with Earth
Simone Swan and her students at the Adobe Alliance are applying North African earthen building techniques to adobe buildings in the southwestern United States.
June/July 2009
By Catherine Wanek
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An adobe building workshop in Texas. Adobe buildings are well suited to desert climates. The vaulted roofs of this building are inspired by North African building techniques that make it possible to build without wood.
YASMINA ROSSI
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The allure of elegant earthen architecture can be life-changing. At least that was the case for urbane New Yorker Simone Swan, who in the 1970s became fascinated with the ideas and designs of renowned Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. Then the 40-something executive head of the Houston-based Menil Foundation, Swan moved to Cairo to study with Fathy. She became his most passionate advocate, and transplanted his adobe building techniques to the Southwestern United States.
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Fathy’s quest was to provide comfortable and affordable housing for ordinary Egyptians. In pursuing that goal, he revived the traditional practice of building domes and vaults from sun-dried earth blocks, or adobes. By emulating ancient construction techniques and literally using the earth beneath his feet, Fathy designed beautiful, climate-appropriate buildings in the treeless Egyptian landscape. The harmonious proportions and intricate detailing transformed earth-block structures into simple yet sublime architecture.
The secrets of Near Eastern and North African domed, arched and vaulted architecture had nearly been lost to history, but Fathy managed to locate builders who had not lost the skill of constructing Nubian catenary vaults that do not require wooden form work to support the construction. Fathy’s designs integrated natural cooling strategies, and he applied his art to homes, schools and community buildings, including mosques and marketplaces. His designs were used throughout entire towns, such as Baris and New Gourna in Egypt.
After Fathy’s death in 1989, Simone Swan created a unique home and teaching center in Presidio, Texas, to demonstrate and showcase his building techniques. Adapting architectural ideas developed along the Nile River, Swan began creating a desert compound where adobe was also traditional — in the Big Bend country where the Rio Grande River separates the United States and Mexico.
The adobe tradition in the Southwest requires beams, or vigas, to support a flat roof. But the big trees along the Rio Grande have long since been harvested, so any timber used in construction has to be imported. Swan used her new building to demonstrate the benefits of Nubian vaults, which do not depend on a wooden structure. The adobe brick material is laid in a mud mortar, from the foundation to the top of the arch. The material performs the functions of wall, ceiling, structure and body of the home.
Summertime in the Chihuahuan Desert sees temperatures consistently rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit — thus cooling strategies are key to comfort. Ventilation near the top of the tall vault form allows hot air to escape, displaced by cooler air drawn in from the north side of the building. Fathy understood that building orientation and ornament could reduce heat gain by creating shade at the hottest times of the day. He was a master of form and function, designing architecturally beautiful openings to capture cooling breezes, and directing the air currents through the interior to flush out the warm air. The properties of the adobe building itself — the thermal mass and permeability of earth — moderate the wide temperature swings of the desert.
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