News
Future Workshops 2009 and 2010
September 2009, Katmandu, Nepal. Adobe Alliance is invited by architect Nripal Adhikary, former student, to teach a week-long course in adobe roof building: a dome and a Nubian vault. Adhikary will further teach the inclusion of bamboo elements for reinforcement and protection from rain. The fee is $550 per participant plus airfare to Katmandu. See link on website to Abari, then scroll for Nripal Adhikary.
Spring 2010, Presidio, Texas. Adobe vaults, domes and courses in design, theory and history, plus a course in biomimetism by Dennis Dollens, author of The Tumble Truss Project, Building As Nature, Simone Swan: Adobe Building, and more. Fifteen students and professors from the International University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, will attend.
Delayed: Building the student center in Bowie, AZ, at Diamond Mountain University. The center is designed by Simone Swan and Estevan Trujillo of e3 design lab in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Fall 2008 Workshops
Please download the new PDF fall workshop poster!
September 2008, Juarez, Mexico. Adobe building of vaults and domes at the architecture school of the Universidiad Autonoma. Former Adobe Alliance student, professor Teresa de Jesus Estrada, is organizing a weeklong seminar and hands-on session. For information contact lourdes@adobealliance.org.
October 17-22, 2008: learning how to build a foundation of gravel, stones, rocks and poured mud mortar.
October 24-November 3, 2008: building walls for a room measuring 31'x10'x6' with large adobe bricks and adobe mortar, keying the corners.
November 3-25, 2008: instruction in hand-crafting a Nubian vault, springing from six feet to cover the space.
Registration: Adobe Alliance holds registrations with deposit of $200 preferably before June 1st. Mail checks to Adobe Alliance 632 Avenida Celaya, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506.
Fees: Will depend on dates desired and can be agreed upon individually. Sample fee for 3 days of building walls, $350, or for 2 weeks fashioning vault $750.
Funds for scholarships will have to be raised.
The adobe workshop will take place at the Adobe Alliance, Swan House,
1 Casa Piedra Road, Presidio, Texas 79845.
Directions:
South from Marfa, Texas, on 67. Driving into Presidio you will cross a long bridge over shallow Cibolo creek, you turn left onto 170 east which meanders through presidio, sometimes at unexpected absurd right angles. Stay on this paved road for 6 miles, then turn left onto Casa Piedra dirt road. 1.5 miles up the mesa is the swan house/ adobe lab for Adobe Alliance on the right. Welcome!
Presidio has a private airport. Also it is 3 hours by bus from Chihuahua airport, 4 hours by car from El Paso and Midland, Texas, airports.
Lodgings:
In Presidio are two motels, Big Bend Motel (#432-229-3611,) and Riata Inn (#432-229-2528.)
Also right across the bridge in Ojinaga, Mexico, is a choice of clean, inexpensive motels, Cabañas El Camino (#011-52-626-453-4699,) Hotel Karike (#011-52-626-453-0368) and Hotel Valentino’s (#011-52-626-453-2677.)
La Paloma RV park 5 miles from Swan House welcomes campers who will benefit from showers and laundry (432-229-2992.) There is camping space on my land but no water.
Comforts:
1. Bring sun protection , work gloves, heavy shoes, a bucket and a float, plus your own drinking water as my filter is too slow for 20+ thirsty people. 2. There is a great view from the privy down the bluff to the east (sorry! no flushing indoors lest we overburden and even drain the 12 batteries which provide electricity that pumps water to the 24-volt solar system.) 3. You may sleep on the deck on your mattress and in your bag, weather permitting (November hovers between 90 degrees at 1pm and 60 at 7 am.) 4. Do not lean over to pet my dog, Hassan Fatima, if you are wearing a gimme cap or a large hat; she feels attacked. 5. Feel free to bring your dog. 6. Required reading: Architecture For The Poor, Hassan Fathy, U. of Chicago Press, also sold in Mexico in Spanish, in Japan in Japanese and in Brasil in Portuguese. 7. We will arrange car-pooling to distant Presidio by phone or e-mail during the last week before this work session.
Recent News
For the March 14-17, 2008, workshop we built a small demonstration vault against an existing wall. It is the beginning that is tricky, how to place the first half-brick at the correct angle, and how to use an appropriate amount of mortar. Everyone participated in handling the adobes and placing them. By the end of Sunday afternoon the vault was completed, then removed.
Simone gave a power point presentation and actually built, with high school students, a small Nubian vault at the Sonoma Valley (CA) Museum of Art. To an enthusiastic and large audience on January 18th, she presented the work of Adobe Alliance and met adobe enthusiasts who are enrolling in future workshops. This event was organized at the invitation of board member Stanley Abercrombie in conjunction with his exquisite installation of Butabu, the superb exhibition of photos of mud architecture in Djenne, Mali, by James Morris of Wales.
Simone and Santa Fe architect Beverley Spears attended in Bamako, capital of Mali, the 5-day Getty conference on the conservation and new building of earth architecture. They toured the towns of Segou, Mopti and Djenne where the finest adobe structures in the south Sahara are to be found.
The Adobe Alliance workshop for November 1-4, 2007 was held at the Swan House & Lab in Presidio, Texas, but lasted until November 30th. Actual building instruction and experience took place across the Rio Grande in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, population about 20,000. Participants were from Japan, Corsica, Iran, Mexico, England, Arizona and 2 from Texas. For past information please see the workshops page, download the workshop poster or the workshop notes information packet.
The Adobe Alliance has been retained to design a student union at the Buddhist center of Diamond Mountain in Bowie, east Arizona. Co-designer introduced to the project is Estevan Trujillo of e3designlab in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The client has opted for rammed earth walls to be roofed by adobe brick vaults which Alliance workers and interns will build by hand.
News Archive
The book "Simone Swan: Adobe Building" is now available. Written by Dennis Dollens, 2005 graduate of an Adobe Alliance workshop, it was published in April 2006 by Lumen Books and is readily available from Amazon, together with a review. Here's a direct link to the book.
Johnnye Montgomery has posted an article and photos about the Adobe Alliance to the web. The Adobe Association of the Southwest held its AdobeUsa2007 conference in May 2007 in El Rito, New Mexico, near Santa Fe. It was attended by scholars and builders from Mexico and South America as well as experts from the US. The board, which includes Simone, is preparing for an enthusiastic 2008. For information consult www.Adobeasw.com.
The November 2006 workshop counted five architects, one architecture student from Texas A&M university and her mother, two civil engineers from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, four alumni, and enthusiastic students in earth building from all over the map. Interns during preparations were Stevan de la Rosa from Mexico and Scott Rhodes from Austin, Texas; interns for two weeks of building after the workshop were architect Jesus Robles from Arizona and his friend Will McCormick from New Mexico.
A 14'x12' adobe brick vaulted roof was completed to shelter a large plastic water tank. An 8ft wide arched doorway permits eventual removal of the tank and on the opposite wall facing south is a 2ft wide entrance. The structure is so beautiful it deserves an appreciative human occupant but for the moment this is our best solution to hide the ugly tank.
November 4-6, 2005, workshop in Presidio on the art and technique of building a Nubian vaulted roof by hand, was, again, a huge success and attracted lively people of all ages (hardworking 10-year-old to my age) from places like Patagonia, AZ, Iran, Bulgaria, Oregon, students from UT Architecture, Corsica -- all a treat to be with. We have photos in the gallery section!
November 11-15, 2005, Simone presented her work to colleagues from Africa and South America at the University of Santa Clara, Cuba, and at the Centro Universitario Echeverria near Havana. The conferences in Cuba were of immense interest and high quality. The first was on earth building and included Gernot Minke whom I grew to like and admire enormously. Speakers from Ecuador (on preventive seismic damage to foundations of rammed earth buildings), Cuba (community cooperative construction of schools,) Seychelles, Namibia and more were thorough, passionate and provided clear illustrations. The second was in Santa Clara on Eco-Materials. Presenters came from Kenya, Switzerland, Turkey, Argentina, Brasil, Cuba of course, and appeared to me far ahead in research, application and thoroughness from the little I have witnessed here in the US. Both conferences were super-efficiently organized by Paul Moreno of Quito. I have the emails of participants and shall be receiving more information.
November 20, 2005 the Proyecto de Alimentos y Semillas in Guatemala will query Simone on adobe building and the appropriate roofing in that climate.
September 23 to October 7, 2005, Jesusita Jimenez and Simone Swan were invited by architect Marcela Perez of San Luis Potosi to teach campesinos -- subsistence farmers -- the construction of adobe roofs by hand.
In May 2005 The Adobe Association of the Southwest awarded the Adobe Alliance with their annual prize, this one for design excellence in mud architecture. On May 20, 2005, Quentin Wilson, founder of the AASW in El Rito, NM, presented Simone with a small roof adobe on a carved wood mount at the group's third annual conference.
The annual conferences at the association are not to be missed. Speakers come from afar, and simpatico attendees offer a vast amount of information and experiences to share, all in the peaceful and charming environment of the campus of the Northern New Mexico College.
In March, 2005 Simone Swan gave a presentation entitled From The Nile To The Rio Grande, in Austin, Texas, at Women And Their Work Gallery, sponsored by The Texas Folklife Resources. Thirty chairs were installed but 150 people came. Next she spoke at Project Row Houses in Houston and on KPFT, the Pacifica station in Houston.
The February 18-21, 2005 workshop was a huge success and accounts can be read in The Desert Candle of March 15, '05, in my piece entitled The Merry Pranks of Scholarly Mud Freaks. Twenty-five interesting people -- permaculturalists, a biologist, environmental historian, engineer, tile-maker, five young architects -- convened and got very muddy.
In November 2004 A small dome was built in Santa Fe for Cristel Blomquist.
In 2002 and 2003 the Adobe Alliance invited adobe builders, daubers and sundry enthusiasts to learn how to mix clay and straw with water, plus highly glutinous prickly pear cactus juice and horse manure (we now suspect the manure attracts termites) for malleability. This was followed by instruction from Jesusita Jimenez and Joaquin Valenzuela on plastering walls and roofs by hand or with trowel.
In the spring of 2001 Ms. Jimenez and Simone were invited by Athena and Bill Steen to demonstrate the building of mud roofs made by hand in the configuration of vaults and domes to village women in the Mexican state of Sonora at Xochitl near Obregon. The skill was adopted with real success, the women having an affinity with the material and form rather than with metal roofing.