MATERIALS: Sun dried mud bricks made
from the local red earth
FEATURES:
Hole pattern in the walls = daylight + natural ventilation
Bright and colorful handmade shutters
Large covered porch
creates an = outdoor community room
"The purpose of the vocational training centre is to encourage and teach poor
families to earn their own living. The Sra Pou community is one of the
unprivileged communities in Cambodia, who have been evicted from their homes in
the city to the surrounding countryside. They lack basic infrastructure, decent
built environment and secure income. The new vocational school provides
professional training and helps the people to start sustainable businesses
together. It is also a place for public gathering and democratic
decision-making for the whole community."
Social &
Environment Sustainable, Healthy & Beauty
"Currently it is estimated that one half
of the world's population, approximately three billion people on six
continentsi, lives or works in buildings constructed of earth"
"Scott Howard's most notable achievements have been; a 17 foot earthen
dome completed in Mali; a 23 foot earthen dome built in Thailand;
an ornate earthen cottage built for a local Portland school, exhibiting
an ecoroof and eight stained glass windows by Scott; a set of artistic
earthen
columns on a porch in Portland, Oregon. Four other Portland schools also
have substantial earthen works created by Scott, who teaches his
methods to
volunteers on most of his projects. Other works include his privately
commissioned earthen benches, ovens, ceramic sculptures, stained glass
windows,
and artistic furniture."
“Our
students are of all ages,
and everyone learns a lot. Kids love playing with mud. Adults see the
socio-political empowerment and utility of our techniques. Our
international
workshops assist indigenous communities by creating a useful structure.
Participants of these workshops get a wonderful visit to a new country
that
allows them to interact with and give something significant to local
peoples”
“We
encourage
experimentation because it brings even more effective designs. It is our
goal
to create solid, artful structures that will inspire people to want to
learn
about them”
“I
seek to
create sacred spaces that inspire reverence for nature. The curvilinear
and
soft feeling of earthen materials encourages health and well-being.
Nature
itself shows us all the patterns that we might ever need to make
harmonious
dwellings in any climate. Natural Building is the realignment of our
spaces and
consciousness with mother nature. Our ancestors refined constructed
human
landscapes that never depart from the surrounding earth. Could the
ancient
builder have been more advanced than the contemporary?”
WHYEARTH:
"The choices we make today affect who we will
be tomorrow."
Efficiency
Flexibility
Density (Thermal inertia + sound waves isolation + protection from: fire + wind + water + electromagnetic
and microwaves)
“Through our projects we will continually work to
advance the technology of ecologically viable house design with innovation and
testing on the buildings we construct. We offer the results of our research
freely to all interested parties. Sharing information is the way we all win”.
PORTFOLIO:
Ahimsa Sanctuary Garden Kiva Meeting
House Philomath, OR(2001)
Scott Howard
Features:
1200 sf meeting house
Tractor
cob
This project was the site of a Cob Cottage workshop
Scott's first Cob house
Sound Temple Dome Koh Phangan, Thailand(2004)
Scott Howard
(senior designer and builder)
Time: 8-week workshop
People:20 participants
Features:
-This catenary
dome: 23 ft x 23ft (one of the largest of its kind in the world)
-A
crew of local Thai builders finished the dome with cement plasterand tile.
-The
interior offers a rare acoustical experience because of its ability to focus
echoes in the center of the space.
Fathy
devoted himself to housing the poor in developing nations and deserves
study
by anyone involved in rural improvement. Fathy worked to create an
indigenous
environment at a minimal cost, and in so doing to improve the economy
and the
standard of living in rural areas. Fathy utilized ancient design
methods and
materials. He integrated a knowledge of the rural Egyptian economic
situation
with a wide knowledge of ancient architectural and town design
techniques. He
trained local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their
own
buildings. Climatic conditions, public health considerations, and
ancient
craft skills also affected his design decisions.
"The
village of New Gourna, which was partially built between 1945 and
1948, is
possibly the most well known of all of Fathy's projects because of the
international popularity of his book, "Architecture for the Poor",
published nearly twenty years after the experience and concentrating
primarily on the ultimately tragic history of this single village.
While the
architect's explanations offered in the book are extremely compelling
and
ultimately persuasive, New Gourna is still most significant for the
questions
it raises rather than the problems it tried to solve, and these
questions
still await a thorough, objective analysis.
The idea for the village
was launched by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities as a
potentially
cost-effective solution to the problem of relocating an entire
entrenched
community of entrepreneurial excavators that had established itself
over the
royal necropolis in Luxor. The village of New Gourna also seemed to
offer
Fathy a perfect opportunity to finally test the ideas unveiled at
Mansouria
on a large scale and to see if they really could offer a viable
solution to
the rural housing problem in Egypt.
The Village was meant to
be a prototype but rather than subscribing to the current idea of
using a
limited number of unit types, Fathy took the unprecedented approach of
seeking to satisfy the individual needs of each family in the design.
As he
said in Architecture for the Poor, "In Nature, no two men are alike.
Even if they are twins and physically identical, they will differ in
their
dreams. The architecture of the house emerges from the dream; this is
why in
villages built by their inhabitants we will find no two houses
identical.
This variety grew naturally as men designed and built their many
thousands of
dwellings through the millennia. But when the architect is faced with
the job
of designing a thousand houses at one time, rather than dream for the
thousand whom he must shelter, he designs one house and puts three
zeros to
its right, denying creativity to himself and humanity to man. As if he
were a
portraitist with a thousand commissions and painted only one picture
and made
nine hundred and ninety nine photocopies. But the architect has at his
command the prosaic stuff of dreams. He can consider the family size,
the
wealth, the social status, the profession, the climate, and at last,
the hopes
and aspirations of those he shall house. As he cannot hold a thousand
individuals in his mind at one time, let him begin with the
comprehensible,
with a handful of people or a natural group of families which will
bring the
design within his power. Once he is dealing with a manageable group of
say
twenty or thirty families, then the desired variety will naturally and
logically follow in the housing."
All of the architect's
best intentions, however, were no match for the avariciousness of the
Gournis
themselves, who took every opportunity possible to sabotage their new
village
in order to stay where they were and to continue their own crude but
lucrative version of amateur archaeology. Typically but mistakenly
misreading
the reluctance of the people to cooperate in the design and building
of the
village as a sure sign of the inappropriateness of both programming
and form,
many contemporary critics fail to penetrate deeper into the relevant
issues
raised by this project. These issues now, as at the time of
construction half
a century ago, revolve around the extremely important question of how
to
create a culturally and environmentally valid architecture that is
sensitive
to ethnic and regional traditions without allowing subjective values
and
images to intervene in the design process. In the final analysis, the
portion
of New Gourna that was completed must be judged on this basis."
Source:
Steele, James. 1989. The
Hassan Fathy Collection. A Catalogue of Visual Documents at the Aga
Khan
Award for Architecture. Bern, Switzerland: The Aga Khan Trust
for
Culture, 16-18
For all great architecture
is contemporary of its time, relevant to its situation in space, time
and human society-but also eternal. Without being eternal - that is in
harmony with the cosmos and the evolution of life - no architecture can
be called contemporary.