I spent the last few days at Cal Earth, working with my teachers on learning some earth plastering techniques on the Earth One building.
Stay tuned for the fancy photo album. Here are a few photos to pique your interest:
(Mark Harmon teaching me plastering techniques with 90% soil, 10% cement mix)
(Walking on the roof of the Eco-Dome at sunset)
I, like billions of people in the world am deeply saddened by the effects of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. We are donating money from our Antibalas performance in the next week, and Cal Earth, the institute where I studied Superadobe architecture has the following help to offer:
December 28, 2004
PRESS RELEASE
SELF-HELP EMERGENCY SHELTER FOR
ASIAN EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI DISASTER
Cal-Earth Institute is ready to immediately offer its help to Families, International, Governmental and Non-governmental organizations in the Asian Tsunami disaster region for emergency shelters.
Basic materials needed are on-site earth, sandbags, barbed wire, and human labor.
It will contribute its technology using the following methods:
1) Provide Distance Learning via live internet connection instructing the construction of the emergency shelters directly to relief organizations in the disaster area. A local internet connection and standard software are required.
2) Provide free training at Cal-Earth Institute in intensive hands-on workshops to persons coming from the countries disaster regions, or from the United States who are scheduled to go to the disaster areas to teach and supervise the construction of shelters. The training is based on Cal-Earth's existing educational materials.
This emergency shelter technology can be used for the reconstruction of both permanent housing as well as other buildings and infrastructures.
Cal-Earth Institute is a non-profit educational and research organization in Hesperia, California. The Superadobe emergency shelter technology, which has been designed and developed by architect Nader Khalili and his associates at Cal-Earth Institute, has been built and successfully tested for California's strict building codes. It is patented in the U.S. and overseas but is now offered freely to those in need in the disaster region.
The shelters and technology have been visited and endorsed by the United Nations emergency response in 2001, and recently given the 2004 Aga Khan award for architecture for Sandbag Shelters (for photos and video clip see this link) .
For more information see Cal Earth Website , the Photo gallery, News articles, Khalili's message, and Emergency Shelter sections.
CONTACT: Iliona Outram
Tel: (760) 244-0614
Fax: (760) 244-2201
Email: calearth@aol.com
Website: www.calearth.org
Today X. and I bicycled out to Biosquat, a developing urban eco-village on east side of Austin in a few acres of land wedged in between an country-like African American neighborhood and a small forest.
The land isn't actually a squat in the sense that the people living there hold the title to the parcels of land, so they don't stand to be pushed off by authorities, but they are making some of the most sustainable building I have ever seen using parts from bicycles (they have several hundred of them there), amazing clay that's right on site, urbanite (aka pre-formed concrete pieces) and limestone from a rubble dump created nearby when the city demolished buildings in the 60s to build I-35, and tons of sheets of thick corrugated plastic from recycled election signs. I love the irony: Republicans and Democrats contributing directly to sustainable housing.
There are several gardens where I saw (and ate) kale, broccoli, tomatoes, chiles, potatoes, squash, and a bunch of other stuff.
Solar panels catching abundant sunlight and providing current for radios, lightbulbs, and other appliances.
A working composting toilet producing several hundred pounds of fertile nightsoil ...
A rainwater catchment system so effective they had to disconnect it because they filled up their giant cistern and haven't built a new one yet...
Giant towers made of bicycle parts to house electricity generating windmills...
Thanks to David Santos, Juan Martinez, Ed, and Oxossi for the delicious lunch and the delightful tour. We'll be back.
Just a quick note that the temazcal project we are working on in coastal Michoacán, México, is now up on the apprentices page at the Cal Earth (California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture).
Love and power to the other apprentices!!
Phase II (Exterior and interior plastering and finishing) was originally set for January 2005, but different life events have forced me to postpone that until late Spring 2005.
It is frustrating to leave things "half-done" especially when they are so far away, but the combination of being stuck up in the cycle of New York rents and bill-paying has kept me away. Also, Antibalas has been very very busy touring in 2004 and had little time to slip away. With my mom sick again, I don't want to be too far away either. This project has been an exercise in patience in more ways than I could have imagined.
Here is my friend and neighbor Santos Peña Ibarra on top of our superadobe temazcal. Phase Two: Plastering and finishing will commence in late spring.
After hustling into town and getting cement and chapopote just as the hardware stores were closing, we have decided to stop working for the moment. Time has run out on us for the moment in Las Peñas. I have 6 days to get back to New York City in a car that hasn't been doing over 55 miles an hour for the last few weeks (see next entry), and we still have to pack up the house for the rainy season, which takes a good solid day.
We were able to lay a good waterproofed concrete slab of 2 inches thick inside the temazcal, thanks to help again from Don Raul (el Inge) and Don Genaro.
Tomorrow afternoon is the piñata for all the children who participated in the project. Last year, it took several serious hits before the pinata broke, and instead of shattering, it flew of the string, scattering about 1/4 of the candy and leaving the other 3/4 of the candy in the piñata shell which was picked up by one of the more sly children...
So this year we are going to have a piñata filled with...what else but superadobe mix (shh...it's a secret), and give the kids equally sized gift bags to make sure nobody gets left out.
So the clock was ticking and my back and hands were aching from mixing nearly all the soil-cement. The kids had stopped coming, also tired from filling costales (the earth bags) day in and day out. It was time to bring in the hired guns for a day.
Don Raul (aka Inge) and Don Genaro came and mixed the soil for the last four rows. The building finished up strong. The hardest part was making such tight curves with such fat bag (the bag is 17.5 inches wide when empty, and about 14 inches wide when full), so some of our curves did not happen as clean as we wanted them, but we followed the form of the lancet dome for the most part.
Today we mixed cement and Don Genaro did a sand-cement mix for the floor, which needs to be waterproof.
Tomorrow is the plastering day, and when that dries, a coat of chapopote, a black tar-like waterproofing agent available all over Mexico.
The final touches, which will have to wait for the next trip down...
a door, volcanic rocks, interior plastering, and a ceremony to bless the temazcal and get it ready for use.
Santos peeking out from inside
Santos on top
Luis Manuel and Santos on top
So the kids had some vacation days off from school and spent their days playing soccer at the beach instead of mixing soil and hauling it down the hill. How can I blame them. Alejandro and I kept at it, with some pretty backbreaking work. We calculated it to be about 7 tons of soil we've mixed by hand so far.
We are a few rows from finishing... Once finished we apply the outer plaster, then a waterproof coating for the heavy rainy season. We also need to do the inner plastering, a light concrete slab on the floor, the door frame, and door.
I think we can get the structure done, but the plastering may have to wait till the next time we can get back here...
ps. thanks to the people who have been contributing money to the project! it goes quite a long way here! (if you want to donate, click on the PAY PAL button on the lower left)
Alejandro filling the superadobe bags
A shot of the building from above
Carlos, Ivan, Samuel y Osvaldo: Making mix in the street
Sending mix from the street down to the building site
yesterday and today have been great days as far as building. the long bag system works pretty well, especially with 6 or seven people passing the soil mix down. Today we going with two people making the mix, one person passing it into the bag, three people holding the 12 m (36 ft. long) bag, and one person packing the soil into the building bag.
we are trying to think of what would be the most appropriate inner finish. Something that has to resist 115% heat and lots of humidity every once in a while, with water condensing all over the surface, then falling into the gutter.
we built the floor into a convex shape, then put a soil cement finish over it. i think we may do a regular concrete floor because it will get wet.
on an unrelated note, my neighbor Margaro came over with his chain saw and chopped up a 20 foot long fallen tree trunk that had been in the yard for years. A few sections serve to make good benches, and the limbs can be used for the lumbre (log fires) used to cook tortillas.
We have spent the last few days waiting for the big delivery of soil and using what we excavated from last year to build up the floor to a convex shape with a small pit to hold the volcanic rocks.
We sculpted the shape of the with loose soil, then wet it a little bit and tamped down. Then we put a 30% cement 70% soil mix down over that. It's not the final floor, but rather something to hold the shape.
For the floor covering we need something with more cement to be able to resist the heat and moisture in the temazcal, even if it's not on a daily basis.
We also dug a little gutter around the inside of the floor so the water, once condensed, can flow into the drain, which we dug up on the low side.
The soil finally came on Friday morning, and the mixer came yesterday. It was of the cement kind, the small egg-shaped cylinders which are more for pouring concrete slabs.
I didn't think that kind would work well in making the superadobe mix, which is 10 parts soil to 1 part cement to 1 part water, but the operator told me that it would...
When it finally came down to it, we put in the mix, and the soil formed large golf ball size balls that refused to break in the mixer. They didn't seem to think it would do the trick, so we loaded it back up on the truck and it went away.
We haven't resumed construction yet. We are still waiting for the truckload of soil to begin.
Meanwhile, we have been preparing the site. A bunch of vines from a nearby tree have wrapped themselves around what we've already built so there are lots of vines to chop, and maybe the whole tree because if it keeps growing, the root structure will definitely damage our building...
Saturday everyone got a lesson in proper use of the digital camera...
Maybe when I get back to town, a huge pile of soil will be waiting ...
Today we got some bags of cement and a roll of barbed wire. We had a good roll of it last year but somebody borrowed it and didn't give it back.
We figured out a cool way of doing the mix of soil and cement at the top of the hill (with a mechanical mixer) then passing it down the hill through a 12 meter (36 foot long) piece of the earthbag so that we don't have to make trips up and down the hill with materials.
Leo at the top of the hill
With the help of six helpers from last year, we did a little simulation with some regular earth and the system works fine. Part of the crew
