Kate Thayer and her partner Clyde Curry are futurists. They have a clear vision of where the human race is headed and they don’t like what they see. Unlike many, they’re doing something about it.
“We can design a new future, we can create alternatives,” Thayer said. She leaned back in her chair. The couple and this writer are sitting in the indoor garden of their enterprise: Eve’s Garden Organic Bed and Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center in Marathon, Texas.
The faint sweet smell of Wisteria floats through the air. Splashing water percolates from a waterfall at the pond. A cat jumps on my lap and purrs.
“Our world is getting trashed because nobody is stepping up. But we’re stepping up and we’re doing it in our own backyard,” Curry said.
Blue, red, gold walls add a kaleidoscopic background to the greens and whites of their plants. They grow much of their own food indoors; Tonight’s menu: sautéed squash, onions and garlic with free-range chicken soup and home made bread.
It’s a cold mid march day, but warm inside the garden. The walls are thick and made of papercrete, a shredded recycled paper product that has amazing insulation value.
A row of guest rooms open up into the garden. The doorways are arced. Pony-walls with sweeping curves outline the inner-pond, while water gurgles from a fall into a patch of lilies.
“We call our place the Hope Center. Our job is to inspire people. To affect them. To cause an intense reaction to our place,” Thayer said. She is an attractive middle aged woman with big eyes, high cheek bones and a quick smile.
“Our leaders are corporations, entities with no souls who’s sole purpose is to make profit,” Curry said. “The system is working for the rich. But for most of us, the cannibalistic, dog eat dog economy is not getting us anywhere. We need to learn to cooperate. Cooperativism. Maintain our autonomy but work together.” He sat at a small café like table, sipping tea. His graying beard curled around his face. There’s blue paint on his straw hat.
“We need comprehensive change to solve society’s problems. Politicians don’t have the courage or the motivation to lead change. We need grass root movements,” Curry said.
“The first thing to do is cut the load. Papercrete cuts the energy load for heating and cooling by 75 per cent. Grow food locally and eliminate packaging. A million barrels of crude are used every year in this country just to make grocery bags. Eat fruits, nuts and vegetables, that cuts the load of the health care system.” Curry said.
“Eve’s Garden is a small scale example of a village. We grow most of our food and because its not handled and processed and packaged and trucked, its cheap and healthy, fresh and delicious and we don’t have to see a doctor all the time,” Curry said.
“I’m not talking about civil war,” Curry said leaning back in his wicker chair. “I’m talking about an alternative way to live peacefully that doesn’t kill the earth. People want to live healthy. I see villages, eco-villages, units of five hundred people who work together; building, growing, connecting yet maintaining their autonomy. There’s no pay scale, because everybody works at the same rate,” Curry said. “And a few basic laws to help govern.”
Thayer looks out over their inside garden that runs the length of a city block. A black butterfly scurries by. “Art, archtitecture, swiss chard, a lap pool - its OK to have beauty, its OK to have good food, its Ok to have big space too,” Thayer said.
The doorbell chimes. It’s the five o’clock guest. Curry gets up and walks down a corridor.
“There’s a look in many people’s faces when they arrive here,” Thayer said “Inspired. Appreciative. And that’s what we want.”
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Architects of Adobe
Architects Virginia San Fratello and Ronald Rael met as students in Design Studio at Columbia University in 1998.
“It was fate,” San Fratello said. “They were assigned seats, right next to each other.”
The couple sat down with me this week in a house they designed in Marfa, Texas. The home is owned by Terry Mowers and Suzanne Tick of New York.
The white ceilings are twelve foot high, and the walls are adobe, twenty inches thick, with a rich red-brown color known as colorado in Mexico. Fine bits of straw can be seen in the plaster. The cement floors are smooth but imperfect and give off a laquer like sheen. There’s a feel inside the 1300 square foot, two room, minimally furnished house that soothes the senses - a clean rare quiet lingers.
I look through a big glass window. A giant cement sill encases its metal framing while Haystack Mountain shimmers in the distance. There is ample light inside, yet only four windows. Solar tubes illuminate the hallways. A thirteen foot stainless steel kitchen counter runs along the wall, between the two hallways, dividing living room and kitchen from bedroom and bath.
“The house has an inner and outer box. The inner box provides the technology; kitchen, bathroom, heater. It’s separate from the outer box which is mostly earth,” Rael leaned against his chair. “Over fifty per cent of the world’s population lives, works or worships in earth structures,” he said.
“I grew up in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Most of the homes there are made of mud, but there was always this tension between traditional and modern building techniques. It’s the collision of these two forces that excites me,” Rael said. “And then there is steel and concrete and glass.” He stretched out his arms. “This house is a blend of those four materials and those two forces.”
After getting married the two professors taught two years at Clemson University with special assignments at the Southern California Institute for Architecture in Los Angeles.
Now, they are just back from Genoa, Italy where they served a year and a half as co-directors of the Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Renewal and Urban Studies.
“Every meal we had in Italy was great,” San Fratello said.
The two are on there way to Tuscon where they are teaching at the University of Arizona for one semester. Then off to San Francisco where Rael has accepted a position as a professor at University of California – Berkeley. San Fratello will continue to lead their architectural practice.
“Hopefully it’s the last stop for awhile,” she said.
The two have recently visited earth structures in Africa and the Middle East including Mali, Morocco and an 175 foot tall adobe brick structure at Tarim, Yemen.
“Building codes in the USA have not been kind to adobe. Many code writers purport to be safety specialists and do not understand earthen construction,” Rael said. “But things are changing and increasingly codes are supporting adobe. But they have along way to go.”
“The enemy of adobe is capitalism. You can’t sell dirt. You can’t comodify it. You can’t make it homogenous. Dirt is different everywhere you go. You can’t guarantee the same recipe. And thus it’s hard to make a profit on it.”
“Poor people have abandoned the mud house culture because the industrial world has convinced them that they aren’t advancing,” Rael said. “Unfortunately they end up in trailers or worse.”
“Adobe has a low R-value. But its beauty is thermal mass,” San Fratello said. “It absorbs the energy of the sun during the day and radiates it at night.”
I asked them about mixing cement in adobe bricks.
“It makes it more water resistant but becomes a different material and requires interface with big industry,” Rael said. “The largest adobe manufacturer in the world at Alcande, New Mexico mixes cement with the mud only to protect the commodity from rain while its stockpiled at the factory. It’s like a food preservative.”
Rael and San Fratello helped artists Elmgreen & Dragset realize Prada Marfa.
“It challenges the idea of capitalism,” Rael said. He looked out the window. “The primary material used to construct Prada Marfa is dirt.”
The two architects looked at each other, as if a prompt was needed to see who would finish the story. Rael turns and folds his hands together on the table.
“There’s a weird prestige to build from dirt today, but it’s a dying art. Knock-offs of Prada products are everywhere and so are faux-dobes – the preferred style of manufactured southwestern homes,” Rael said.
San Fratello is currently developing an advanced thermal mass technology using water. Called the Hydro-Wall, her design won the 2006 Next Generation Design Competition. Because the wall mimes the patterns of the liquid it is designed to hold, curvilinear surfaces are needed. A shipbuilding firm in Genoa with the technology and history of working with curves produced the first proto-type last year.
“We’re hoping this will lead to an inexpensive final product that is easy to assemble and install,” San Fratello said.
Meantime the duo is working on a book titled Earth Architecture: A new look at the oldest building material on the planet. Princeton Architecture Press intends to release it on October 2008.
The two have recently bought an old adobe home in Marfa and plan to rebuild it.
“It’s a big project. We don’t have a lot of money but it’ll be worth it. We love it out here,” Rael said.
“It was fate,” San Fratello said. “They were assigned seats, right next to each other.”
The couple sat down with me this week in a house they designed in Marfa, Texas. The home is owned by Terry Mowers and Suzanne Tick of New York.
The white ceilings are twelve foot high, and the walls are adobe, twenty inches thick, with a rich red-brown color known as colorado in Mexico. Fine bits of straw can be seen in the plaster. The cement floors are smooth but imperfect and give off a laquer like sheen. There’s a feel inside the 1300 square foot, two room, minimally furnished house that soothes the senses - a clean rare quiet lingers.
I look through a big glass window. A giant cement sill encases its metal framing while Haystack Mountain shimmers in the distance. There is ample light inside, yet only four windows. Solar tubes illuminate the hallways. A thirteen foot stainless steel kitchen counter runs along the wall, between the two hallways, dividing living room and kitchen from bedroom and bath.
“The house has an inner and outer box. The inner box provides the technology; kitchen, bathroom, heater. It’s separate from the outer box which is mostly earth,” Rael leaned against his chair. “Over fifty per cent of the world’s population lives, works or worships in earth structures,” he said.
“I grew up in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. Most of the homes there are made of mud, but there was always this tension between traditional and modern building techniques. It’s the collision of these two forces that excites me,” Rael said. “And then there is steel and concrete and glass.” He stretched out his arms. “This house is a blend of those four materials and those two forces.”
After getting married the two professors taught two years at Clemson University with special assignments at the Southern California Institute for Architecture in Los Angeles.
Now, they are just back from Genoa, Italy where they served a year and a half as co-directors of the Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Renewal and Urban Studies.
“Every meal we had in Italy was great,” San Fratello said.
The two are on there way to Tuscon where they are teaching at the University of Arizona for one semester. Then off to San Francisco where Rael has accepted a position as a professor at University of California – Berkeley. San Fratello will continue to lead their architectural practice.
“Hopefully it’s the last stop for awhile,” she said.
The two have recently visited earth structures in Africa and the Middle East including Mali, Morocco and an 175 foot tall adobe brick structure at Tarim, Yemen.
“Building codes in the USA have not been kind to adobe. Many code writers purport to be safety specialists and do not understand earthen construction,” Rael said. “But things are changing and increasingly codes are supporting adobe. But they have along way to go.”
“The enemy of adobe is capitalism. You can’t sell dirt. You can’t comodify it. You can’t make it homogenous. Dirt is different everywhere you go. You can’t guarantee the same recipe. And thus it’s hard to make a profit on it.”
“Poor people have abandoned the mud house culture because the industrial world has convinced them that they aren’t advancing,” Rael said. “Unfortunately they end up in trailers or worse.”
“Adobe has a low R-value. But its beauty is thermal mass,” San Fratello said. “It absorbs the energy of the sun during the day and radiates it at night.”
I asked them about mixing cement in adobe bricks.
“It makes it more water resistant but becomes a different material and requires interface with big industry,” Rael said. “The largest adobe manufacturer in the world at Alcande, New Mexico mixes cement with the mud only to protect the commodity from rain while its stockpiled at the factory. It’s like a food preservative.”
Rael and San Fratello helped artists Elmgreen & Dragset realize Prada Marfa.
“It challenges the idea of capitalism,” Rael said. He looked out the window. “The primary material used to construct Prada Marfa is dirt.”
The two architects looked at each other, as if a prompt was needed to see who would finish the story. Rael turns and folds his hands together on the table.
“There’s a weird prestige to build from dirt today, but it’s a dying art. Knock-offs of Prada products are everywhere and so are faux-dobes – the preferred style of manufactured southwestern homes,” Rael said.
San Fratello is currently developing an advanced thermal mass technology using water. Called the Hydro-Wall, her design won the 2006 Next Generation Design Competition. Because the wall mimes the patterns of the liquid it is designed to hold, curvilinear surfaces are needed. A shipbuilding firm in Genoa with the technology and history of working with curves produced the first proto-type last year.
“We’re hoping this will lead to an inexpensive final product that is easy to assemble and install,” San Fratello said.
Meantime the duo is working on a book titled Earth Architecture: A new look at the oldest building material on the planet. Princeton Architecture Press intends to release it on October 2008.
The two have recently bought an old adobe home in Marfa and plan to rebuild it.
“It’s a big project. We don’t have a lot of money but it’ll be worth it. We love it out here,” Rael said.
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