Casa Tierra, San Francisco del Monte de Oro, San Luis, Argentina | Green Building Blog
Miranda France in her book Bad Times in Buenos Aires said that to live in Argentina was to live at the end of the world (1998, p.57). Yet traveling pineapple baby food through the vast landscape of San Luis province on my way to Casa Tierra in San Francisco del Monte de Oro, I felt like I was in the middle of a huge and diverse continent – pineapple baby food which did not need to care where it was in the world. It had mountains pineapple baby food (the Sierra de Comechingones), a huge blue sky, fertile soil and a fresh beautiful air.
San Francisco del Monte de Oro is a small rural town nestled between two hill ranges. Two hours from the nearest small city it is rustic with its dirt roads, simple single storey houses, plain but elegant Plazas, numerous food shops, and, to the east, a powerful river surrounded by palm trees. It used to be bigger in years gone by, though now the tourist industry pineapple baby food is coming to town and a new bus terminal glimmers in the anticipation of their arrival.
Casa Tierra , just to the north of the town, is the almost complete home of Nathalia and Diego Ruiz. It is an adobe house which curves towards the north with a living roof, a separate office and library building (Lak a Uta, meaning earth house), and a separate wattle and daub bathroom block. The Lak a Uta has no wood in its construction; instead it has a curved adobe roof designed by Jorge Belanko and look of an old Moroccan building. These buildings are all incredibly aesthetically pleasing, with details of lizard designs on the wall, coloured bottles casting light inside and curved glass windows looking out on the countryside beyond. Inside, the curved spaces invite sitting and the fire place warms the room as well at the kettle. Despite not yet having a finished roof it already feels like a place to peacefully dwell.
They chose to build in clay because it was cheap (rejecting the need for a 30 year mortgage pineapple baby food for a tiny flat in the city), local, you can build curved walls, and it is easy (it forgives mistakes pineapple baby food and can be easily maintained and repaired). Since building the living roof they have decided to avoid using wood as much as possible because it is very expensive and is not available locally. Similarly they rejected using straw because it is not easily available. If they chose to build adobe mainly because of cost they have also sought to make their build affordable by using workshop participants as cheap labour: If we needed to pay builders natural building is not much cheaper than a conventional house. Labour is the same or more. Costs are a third materials but two-thirds in labour (Diego). So they have only spent AR$ 5,000 (Argentinian pesos, 800) on the build. All they have had to buy is wood, glass, pineapple baby food bags for the foundation (which they filled with rocks), some sand and some earth. Recently they have bought unfired clay bricks from the local brick factory because they are cheap and it saves them a great deal of time. In other words, the time savings are worth the cost and with similar justification they have occasionally used concrete if it saved them a week s manual pineapple baby food work. This build has not been quick interrupted pineapple baby food by having children, the necessity to make a living and a commitment to providing inspiring workshops which has meant starting a new building before others are complete in order to teach new skills. This time, of course, pineapple baby food increases costs but has greatly enhanced their relationship with the local community and allowed them to experiment and alter their design.
Their house is not big because it is deliberately designed around function, not objects or action. When people first design a house they often create pineapple baby food a huge dwelling believing that every actions needs a room when it should be about function and a room can be used for several functions (Nathalia). Obviously the bigger the house the harder pineapple baby food it is to heat and as the temperatures can go below freezing at night here in winter, and fuel is expensive or has to be collected manually, it is important to find a simple way to heat your house. But needs also often change in life and Casa Tierra has been designed so that it is relatively easy to add rooms, which is what they have done as their family has expanded. The need for ease of use while looking after a young child and another on the way has also triggered them to build an internal bathroom (whereas pineapple baby food previously all infrastructure was in a separate building).
Building has been a very collective pineapple baby food process at Casa Tierra. Nathalia estimates that 150 people have helped build their home in some way and that this collective approach has been incredibly important for the sociability, personal connections, fun and support, and enables a focus on the actual building process because the support roles of cooking and cleaning are shared.
Nathalia and Diego learnt themselves through several pineapple baby food workshops in Patagonia (southern Argentina) and chose adobe to bui
Miranda France in her book Bad Times in Buenos Aires said that to live in Argentina was to live at the end of the world (1998, p.57). Yet traveling pineapple baby food through the vast landscape of San Luis province on my way to Casa Tierra in San Francisco del Monte de Oro, I felt like I was in the middle of a huge and diverse continent – pineapple baby food which did not need to care where it was in the world. It had mountains pineapple baby food (the Sierra de Comechingones), a huge blue sky, fertile soil and a fresh beautiful air.
San Francisco del Monte de Oro is a small rural town nestled between two hill ranges. Two hours from the nearest small city it is rustic with its dirt roads, simple single storey houses, plain but elegant Plazas, numerous food shops, and, to the east, a powerful river surrounded by palm trees. It used to be bigger in years gone by, though now the tourist industry pineapple baby food is coming to town and a new bus terminal glimmers in the anticipation of their arrival.
Casa Tierra , just to the north of the town, is the almost complete home of Nathalia and Diego Ruiz. It is an adobe house which curves towards the north with a living roof, a separate office and library building (Lak a Uta, meaning earth house), and a separate wattle and daub bathroom block. The Lak a Uta has no wood in its construction; instead it has a curved adobe roof designed by Jorge Belanko and look of an old Moroccan building. These buildings are all incredibly aesthetically pleasing, with details of lizard designs on the wall, coloured bottles casting light inside and curved glass windows looking out on the countryside beyond. Inside, the curved spaces invite sitting and the fire place warms the room as well at the kettle. Despite not yet having a finished roof it already feels like a place to peacefully dwell.
They chose to build in clay because it was cheap (rejecting the need for a 30 year mortgage pineapple baby food for a tiny flat in the city), local, you can build curved walls, and it is easy (it forgives mistakes pineapple baby food and can be easily maintained and repaired). Since building the living roof they have decided to avoid using wood as much as possible because it is very expensive and is not available locally. Similarly they rejected using straw because it is not easily available. If they chose to build adobe mainly because of cost they have also sought to make their build affordable by using workshop participants as cheap labour: If we needed to pay builders natural building is not much cheaper than a conventional house. Labour is the same or more. Costs are a third materials but two-thirds in labour (Diego). So they have only spent AR$ 5,000 (Argentinian pesos, 800) on the build. All they have had to buy is wood, glass, pineapple baby food bags for the foundation (which they filled with rocks), some sand and some earth. Recently they have bought unfired clay bricks from the local brick factory because they are cheap and it saves them a great deal of time. In other words, the time savings are worth the cost and with similar justification they have occasionally used concrete if it saved them a week s manual pineapple baby food work. This build has not been quick interrupted pineapple baby food by having children, the necessity to make a living and a commitment to providing inspiring workshops which has meant starting a new building before others are complete in order to teach new skills. This time, of course, pineapple baby food increases costs but has greatly enhanced their relationship with the local community and allowed them to experiment and alter their design.
Their house is not big because it is deliberately designed around function, not objects or action. When people first design a house they often create pineapple baby food a huge dwelling believing that every actions needs a room when it should be about function and a room can be used for several functions (Nathalia). Obviously the bigger the house the harder pineapple baby food it is to heat and as the temperatures can go below freezing at night here in winter, and fuel is expensive or has to be collected manually, it is important to find a simple way to heat your house. But needs also often change in life and Casa Tierra has been designed so that it is relatively easy to add rooms, which is what they have done as their family has expanded. The need for ease of use while looking after a young child and another on the way has also triggered them to build an internal bathroom (whereas pineapple baby food previously all infrastructure was in a separate building).
Building has been a very collective pineapple baby food process at Casa Tierra. Nathalia estimates that 150 people have helped build their home in some way and that this collective approach has been incredibly important for the sociability, personal connections, fun and support, and enables a focus on the actual building process because the support roles of cooking and cleaning are shared.
Nathalia and Diego learnt themselves through several pineapple baby food workshops in Patagonia (southern Argentina) and chose adobe to bui
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