Natural Building with Earth
(Page 2 of 3)
June/July 2009
By Catherine Wanek
Earthen materials create living environments that need to breathe (ventilate) and perspire (transpire) to be healthy. When finished with an earth or lime plaster, earthen walls allow moisture to move harmlessly through the wall system, creating a cooling effect, much in the same way that sweat cools a human body.
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Swan’s home contains key elements of Fathy’s designs — the arched shapes, an inner courtyard, wind-catchers and other natural ventilation strategies. The house is also powered by renewable energy, running on electricity generated by photovoltaic panels and a wind turbine.
Through her nonprofit organization, the Adobe Alliance, Swan hosts educational workshops on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, building homes without lumber and using traditional adobes to create unconventional shapes.
In Swan’s very first class, a hard-working local woman stood out. Maria Jesus Jimenez was skilled with adobe, and she quickly grasped the craft of building adobe vaults and domes. “Jesusita” has been Simone’s principal artisan and workshop instructor ever since. While adobe construction is labor-intensive, a skilled building team can move remarkably quickly. Swan and her artisan crew adopted Fathy’s dome- and vault-building techniques, and adapted them to local materials — for instance, adding gelatinous cactus juice to stabilize plaster and creating shade with ocotillo stalks (a tall, spiny desert bush).
Adobe bricks utilize abundant and free local materials, and the lofty arch can shelter a comfortable living space. In his writing, and in his many enduring buildings, Hassan Fathy’s ideas and designs for an “architecture for the people” remain inspirational today. So is the work of designer and teacher Simone Swan, which offers a model of affordable, sustainable and beautiful structure, appropriate for desert climates the world over.
Adobe Building Philosophy
Fathy’s mission was to design and build earth dwellings in harmony with the local climate, environment and tradition. This builder’s material is available free, ready to be dug, then perhaps enhanced with sand or clay. If you make a mistake, you scoop it out or trowel it off and re-apply. Follow its known properties, and you are free to build a solid foundation of structurally strong walls with waterproof skin.
For the roofs of smaller earth brick, we follow consecrated mathematical formulas so archaic they are universal, hence also contemporary. A Nubian vault rises course by course on top of a wall while leaning against a higher back wall according to given measurements. Even distribution of the weight ensures structural solidity.
In design, climate and cosmos triumph. The sun is kept out at certain hours and seasons, heartily invited in at others. The moon is honored with a window to the east or a skylight.
