Future Events

Lime Plastering Session. March 23 to end of April.

Climate change in the Chihuahuan desert now threatens us with enough rain to justify waterproofing adobe structures with lime. We have used so far earth plasters for over a decade when rainfall remained at 10" a year. As soon as we have a date to hire a professional plasterer, and right now estimates are being submitted, we shall invite student workers to participate in sessions at Swan House & Lab, no tuition. To render walls waterproof the plaster will contain sand, lime, cactus juice and a minimal amount of cement. Jesusita Jimenez will be with us, our long time friend and teacher.

From March 15 to March 22, Adobe Alliance will plan an exchange of skills with master builder Vaughn Fryfogle of Mississippi: He will demonstrate his advanced plastering methods which resist 100" of rain annually in Lucedale, near Mobile, in exchange for mastering the engineering technique we teach to build a hemispheric domed roof and the Nubian vault out of small adobes. Students wishing to attend during that week will be monitored by Jesusita. Tuition fee March 15 to March 22 is $500 cash. Donations in kind such as ladders and wheelbarrows are accepted and can be pre-arranged with simoneswan@gmail.com.

Student/workers who wish to plaster after March 23, open ended through April are charged no tuition. Those experienced in working with lime plasters are particularly welcome.

Camping at Swan House is available @ $10 a day, water is solar-pumped from the arroyo and the privy boats the most beautiful view over 40,000 acres of Big Bend State Park. Participants will benefit from the outdoor hot shower if they are frugal, and will have some kitchen privileges. Food is sold at the one market in Presidio or at the lavish supermarket across the bridge in Ojinaga, Mexico. To return to the US on the same bridge proof of citizenship is required, preferably a passport. Delightfully temperate weather lasts through March when the entire desert is in bloom. Winds rise in April.

Erratum: Pakistan March 2013: Simone's invitation to teach in the Sindh valley for two weeks is indefinitely postponed because of socio-political disturbances.

March 2013: Two Weeks In An Eco-Village In The Sindh Valley West Of Karachi, Pakistan.

ADOBE ALLIANCE is invited by renowned architect Jasmeen Lari of the Heritage foundation in Karachi, Pakistan, to teach the craft of building by hand vaulted and domed woodless roofs out of small sun-baked mud bricks with families of refugees still in need of housing after the devastating floods of 2011. Simone Swan will teach the week of March 11, 2013. The following week she will teach a class of architecture students from Karachi how to begin building the Nubian vault, a barrel vault, and a semi-spherical domed roof, also by hand, using no centering, no industrial material.

Chihuahua City, No Firm Date, Spring-Summer 2013:

We shall build with families in need of structurally sound affordable mud brick housing. To avoid the costs of industrial materials such as beams and roofing, builders will learn the craft of constructing roofs by hand in the configuration of the Nubian vault and hemispherical domes, using small sun-dried adobe bricks. We foresee that projects in Chihuahua will be long term.

For further information contact swan@adobealliance.org.

The Adobe Alliance, Inc., is a Texas non-profit corporation. Donations are tax-deductible and much welcomed for maintenance of the 500 acre property.

Past Events 2012

In Memoriam: Santos Chavez

Photo credit Sandro Canovas.The world -- and friends of Adobe Alliance -- has lost the great adobero, mud brick master, builder Santos Chavez, artisan of earth mixtures, whether clay, sand or simple soil. His was a life of constant toil and pure passion for his advanced craft. In January 2013, at age 75, Santos did not survive the winter in Ojinaga, Chih., Mexico, in his unheated cement block house.

May 2012. Simone, together with colleagues Quentin Wilson of El Rito Adobe School, and Ronald Rael, author of the seminal volume Earth Architecture, presented their work in earth architecture at the annual congress of the Architecture Institute of America in Washington, D.C. May 17th. Masters in architecture Lauran Unzueta at McGill University initiated and organized this contribution to the event.

October 2012. Closing (almost!) of the west vault. While perched on scaffolding Paul Dennehy, Fort Worth architect, slapped course after course of small roof bricks to build the vault he had begun with others. Judy Boe also gave her all. C. M. Mayo, our writer participant from Mexico City, managed to climb the scaffolding then contributed grandly her good article on Adobe Alliance at Swan House
(see C.M.Mayo, A Visit To Swan House, Cenizo Journal winter 2013).

Past Events 2011

March 2011: March 6th through 13th, 2011. Participants were introduced to the craft of building a Nubian vault using small bricks measuring 10"x7"x1.5". Hands-on teaching and theory were offered in English and Spanish by Instructor Stevan de la Rosa of Baja California. Simone Swan taught design, history and gladly discusses, in English and French, experiences in earth architecture based on her apprenticeship in Egypt with architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989).

Photo Credit: C. Theimer Gardella

I had the joy to meet a remarkable architect, Mauricio Rocha Iturbide of Mexico DF. When we discovered our shared and profound passion for Louis I. Kahn, we promptly fell in love. Mauricio's rammed earth and adobe work is in Mexico, but he has worked in other materials in Europe. Mauricio is a few months younger than his good friend Rick Joy of Arizona, my favorite of all US architects, who has just turned 50; to my further joy I have just discovered Mauricio is the son of the revered photographer Graciela Iturbide!

In Chihuahua I was received, welcomed, sheltered, transported and spoiled by my good friends, both architects, Ana and Roberto Carvajal. For 48 hours basked in an atmosphere of optimism, charm and human warmth -- the very opposite of Santa Fe. Were Chihuahuaenses not living in an atmosphere of fear due to the unpredictable violence of the narco traffickers, I'd move!

There one appreciates the desert, the sunlight and dry air, the hills denuded of trees which blunt one's gaze. The eye rests on the freedom of vast distances.

April 2011: Trip to visit the marvels of Yemeni cities made of mud, beginning with Sanaa. While there the conference we were to attend, given by Salma Samar Damluji of the Daw'an Mudbrick Architecture Foundation, was cancelled.

September 2011. Simone was invited by Habitat for Humanity Southeast Asia in Bangkok to present her work on adobe design and the building by hand of vaulted and domed woodless roofs . The invitation was prompted by Fernando Morales, Mexican architect at H for H, who is actively promoting earth architecture in the desert regions of southeast Asia -- Australia, India -- and beyond, in central Asia.

"This large gathering, in contrast to most conferences, was spirited, optimistic, enthusiastic," Simone reports, "An energy among professionals from Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia indicates to me a future of sensible and sensitive solutions in the field of housing built of non-industrial materials." As a result the Adobe Alliance will work this spring 2012 near Darjeeling with the Abari Group (see link on this website) to build in West Bengal an elementary school for local children and for refugees from Nepal. Materials are mud, either in bricks or rammed, and bamboo for structural elements and protection from rains. Nripal Adhikary, alumnus from a 2005 workshop with Adobe Alliance, is the architect in charge.

October 2011. Adobe Alliance presented at the Earth USA conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, together with colleagues from around the world. The subject was social organizing of cooperative low-cost adobe housing with the theme that the roof is no longer a problem.

Download: Adobe Alliance Earth USA 2011 Presentation (PDF)

Past Events 2010

October 2010: Today we are thrilled to tell you that we are singled out in the exhibition catalogue of SMALL SCALE BIG CHANGE published by the Museum of Modern Art of NY. WE ARE IN IT HERE on page 14, after an introduction of the work of our mentor Hassan Fathy, begins a paragraph with "Activist Simone Swan..." Go see. Remarkable in our experience is that every word, every thought is exact. Mind you, the writer Andres Lepik is a scholar. Plus he is charming: We met him at his office last April 2010.

November 2010: We began Tuesday, November 16th to learn how to make a Nubian vault to roof an adobe house. The weather was perfect, the views were sublime, the silence was enhanced by the murmur of bees, the half moon echoes the form of the dome. As we built the Nubian vault with our small adobe bricks we gazed upon the 8,000 ft peaks, the Sierra Rica, across in Mexico with several lower ranges in the foreground, including a beautiful dormant volcano. To the west, toward the Chinati range, visibility was at least 40 miles.

Desert Acacia - Photo credit: Dave Pobst