Commentary

Supplementing studies carried out in a typical classroom setting, some educators of vernacular architectural traditions have opted for a hands-on experiential approach to teaching and learning to pass on age-old knowledge of design and construction that is sustainable and sensitive to the local context, using natural materials like earth.

In some educational environments, gone is the strict setting of learning by rote from heavy textbooks, replaced by an informal, on-site learning-by-doing approach. Students are asked to get their hands dirty, literally, by drying mud bricks to understand the use of indigenous materials. In places as diverse as New Mexico and Burkina Faso, we discover the teaching of traditional building practices that are ecological, cost-effective and aesthetic. It's about getting back to basics and focusing on architectural education that is not only taught through classic academic methodology, but that one learns in a traditional way through a hands-on experiential approach.

It is learning by doing: training builders and artisans that didn't go to design or architecture school, teaching them sustainable building practices that respect local cultures, peoples and their lands, and contribute to local communities and the environment, and reinventing traditional building materials for modern-day use to produce extraordinary examples of Green architecture. Despite their historical importance, there is limited interest in using these natural materials today, but an effort to promulgate the transmission of ancient skills through traditional training methods is attempting to halt the disappearance of such knowledge. We thus find millennia-old sustainable design principles meeting contemporary architecture.

THE MUD HEN PROJECT
Take the case of The Mud Hen Project (ahousemadeofmud.blogspot.com), a 40-acre earthen building and sustainable demonstration site in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains in New Mexico started by John Corcoran and Liza Macrae. Constructed out of natural building materials like adobe, straw clay, and reclaimed and locally-harvested wood, matched with high-tech solutions like photovoltaic solar power, Mud Hen reveals how a less impactful lifestyle goes hand-in-hand with beautiful design, looking towards the human ingenuity of the past and its indigenous architecture to propel oneself into the modernity of today. As artists and homebuilders, Corcoran and Macrae made the move from New York to New Mexico to learn to build with adobe. In the process, they discovered "what an incredible and viable material earth is, one that may be utilised in response to all sorts of building construction. John has been a builder since the early '70s, and all that experience and history learning what one could do with earth really stirred his imagination," says Macrae.

Thus, the couple launched The Mud Hen Project last year to share what they had learnt. They will be building a small addition to their home once spring arrives, and have invited friends and members of the community to come help build in exchange for learning, as a sort of no-fee casual workshop or informal mentor programme, being primarily focused on educating the owner-builder. Macrae reveals, "We hope to teach experienced builders that a home should not be valued by how many square feet and/or how many bathrooms it has. We also wish to impart that earth is not only a 'green' material, but an incredibly beautiful material to build with, be it for earthen floors, as a plaster or to paint with. We also hope to get people to realise that a smaller home is extremely liberating for several reasons: they are less expensive to build, can be built quickly and slowly added to if need be, use less embodied energy to build and are easier to maintain. We also wish to teach the mechanics of how to build with earth, how to lay adobe, plaster with earth and make paint from earth. As simple as this knowledge is to learn, it is not well known or understood as a viable alternative."

Additionally, each Sunday, weather permitting, they hold an open house where they fire up their adobe bread oven and share pizza, wisdom on sustainable building and fun. In fact, people are able to learn directly from their home as it is a showcase of sustainable architecture. Macrae explains, "I am continually surprised by how our small home touches people you least expect it to. The quiet of the location and the care and love of a handmade house is quite powerful. I believe people learn a great deal through experience. Inviting people to our home and sharing a meal often opens individuals to new possibilities as to how they can live. For our more well-heeled friends The Mud Hen Project speaks of living a simpler, less stressful life."

ADOBE ALLIANCE
Corcoran and Macrae's friend, Simone Swan of Adobe Alliance (www.adobealliance.org), which promotes the innovative use of earthen materials to establish a new building standard for sustainable homes and communities, is equally passionate about the wonders of earth architecture in terms of comfort, durability and beauty, having studied in Cairo with Egyptian environmental architect Hassan Fathy.

Near-extinct North African domed, arched and vaulted architecture based on timberless earth brick domes and vaults, a centuries-old approach found in many parts of the world, was revived through the pioneering work of Fathy, in response to the loss of traditional building methods in Egypt brought about by decades of indenture and changes caused by Western economic and industrial influences. Committed to helping poor communities suffering from inadequate housing, he taught them indigenous architectural methods that had been perfected by their ancestors, and used a widely-available, low-cost material to show that poverty should not stop one from erecting one's own house. He designed affordable and beautiful habitats using bricks made of mud and straw or grasses after noticing the survival of remarkable examples of Egyptian mud vaults and domes dating back to Pharaonic times.

Today, Swan hosts hands-on workshops on designing and building adobe vaults and domes that apply traditional North African earth building practices to the desert climes of the southwestern United States, while incorporating knowledge learnt from local masons in the Chihuahuan Desert.

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Having lived on three different continents, Y-Jean is no stranger to change. A peripatetic lifestyle such as hers allows her to move easily among cultures, and she quickly adapts and adjusts to new environments, rising to meet the challenges and opportunities that necessarily emerge from the school of life. She finds joy and solace in writing and has been contributing to various regional and international titles, shining a spotlight in particular on art, design and horology. When she's not writing, you'll find her dancing, practising yoga or dreaming up scenarios for a murder-mystery novel she hopes to write in the future.

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