Projects Abroad

Wood Marsh Architects Designs Rammed Earth House

Saturday, January 22. 2011

Photography by Jean Luc Laloux

Designed by Wood Marsh Architects, this monumental new home in the small town of Merricks overlooks vineyards and Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay. Featuring rammed earth walls, which form the home’s central spine, their design forms shelter against the often harsh coastal environment.


Photography by Jean Luc Laloux

Intended primarily as a holiday and weekend residence, the brief was for a family home that would stand up to the local conditions, requiring little or no maintenance. The client was also keen to ensure that parts of the house could be used, as well as the whole, and as a result discrete openings appear in the central corridor. 

Projects Abroad

Dwelling in Beja

Saturday, March 26. 2011

The Dwelling in Beja is a single-family dwelling built of rammed earth and a mixed structure of reinforced concrete and wood with zinc coping. Self-levelling floors of craftwork brick tiles, wood. Traditional render of aerated lime paste and whitewash with the addition of natural pigments. Betão e Taipa was responsible for the entire construction.

Building Stats
Building area 550 m2
Volume of rammed earth 260 m3
Location Beja municipality
Designed by Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, João Gomes and Mário Anselmo Crespo
Date built 2006

Residence Abroad

The Hinterland House

Sunday, June 5. 2011

The Hinterland House by http://www.morrispartnership.com.au/ is a rammed earth house designed to be in harmony with the Australian bush. No fences, screens or garden areas were incorporated to insure as little disturbance as possible to surrounding inhabitants. The local animal and plant life can continue to roam as freely as before the structure was built.



Along with rammed earth, the material palette includes spotted gum, rough recycled timber, concrete floors, corten steel and zincalume. Building environmental features include the earthen thermal mass, double glazing, shading and cross ventilation that mitigates against the need for air conditioning. Sustainability solutions include the use of worm farm waste treatment, solar heating and hot water, and the cellar pantry drawing cooled air through an underground chamber.



The Hinterland House program includes:

· Living/dining/kitchen core
· Clients’ separate bedroom suite
· Separate studio & study
· Separate guest accommodation

Projects Abroad

Cinema Sil Plaz

Wednesday, August 3. 2011

Photography: Bruno Augsburger and Laura Egger

Over two decades ago, the last cinema closed in Ilanz, an Alpine town in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. To satisfy the locals' cinephile needs, a group of people interested in film and culture formed the Filmclub Ilanz in 1989 and, after staging screenings in makeshift locations (including the town hall), they had a stroke of luck in 2004 in the shape of a 19th century former forge, which had just become vacant. After several years of screenings, they decided to revamp the space, with the help of fellow club members Capaul & Blumenthal Architects, to create a fully fledged cinema, which opened last September.

The ETH Zurich graduates have retained the raw character of the building, creating a cosy screening room and bar on a shoestring. Using local clay and a rammed earth construction method - a sustainable, low-tech building technique with sound-proofing benefits - the project was completed with the help of members of the Filmclub, who also conveniently included a rammed-earth specialist and a stonemason. Seating in the auditorium is padded by sheep-skin covered cushions stuffed by Filmclub members. Meanwhile, paint on the walls of the bar and stage area has been stripped back to reveal the original lime plasterwork of the building and floors are kept bare. The bar itself can be lifted by a manual forklift to make space for a dance floor when there are concerts - just one part of the Cinema Sil Plaz's rich programme of events.

Project Abroad

Sunday, August 21. 2011

Photography: ©Harrison Photography

Saint Bartholomew's Chapel, designed by Kevin deFreitas Architects, was constructed to replace a very small and intimate historic chapel that was ravaged by wildfires in 2007. From that fire, only the original adobe bell tower survived, which became the anchor element in the redesign planning.


Photography: ©Harrison Photography
The new design was conceived to reverently knit together “past” and comfortable traditions, while acknowledging and offering something relevant to current and future generations. Thus, emulating or recreating the past literally was not a project goal. Drawing from a limitless well of Native American and Catholic symbols and metaphors, design elements in plan, section, and elevation were conceived to reference and infuse meaning into the chapel, such as the; rammed earth walls, radial walls, butterfly roof, and extensive use of locally sourced materials.

Residence Abroad - Biome

Utopian dreams

Sarita and Dinesh are the developers of a gated community called Utopia, and wanted an ecological house in their new community to be the beacon of their philosophy. The ground floor of the house has two distinct spaces: one for the inhabitants built around a courtyard with an embedded rock surface, and a service core which houses the utility and drying space and an accommodation for drivers.

The ground floor in the home area has a foyer, a puja in the northeast corner of the plot, living room, dining room and kitchen, and three bedrooms. The first floor of the home is two bedrooms for the children and an open verandah living space for the swing. In the service core is a small apartment for the household help.

The house was designed to harvest all of its rainwater and also treats its black and greywater, which are used for landscape and recharge. This project taught new skills to the team at Ventures, such as coloured cement flooring. It also brought new skilled personnel to the Ventures team.

The house has been designed by Martin Laffierere of Biome Architects, Bangalore

www.biome-solutions.com

Residence abroad - Biome

Biome In Nigeria

Biome was involved in the design of a student housing project in Nigeria and the subsequent technology transfer process. Biome worked with the local staff of Earthblocks, Nigeria the developers in,

• Site identification
• Developing the building brief and design
• Soil identification and modification
• Making of rammed earth foundations
• Making of stabilised mud bricks and building walls
• Making of Pre-cast roofing panels and Pre-cast concrete beams
• Making mud centering for roofs and lintels

SheelRaj Shetty and Sharath Nayak were involved in the technology transfer process and worked jointly on the design with Chitra.

www.biome-solutions.com

Chitra here.I like stories associated with projects and this one has an interesting one.
The process of this design and execution was a truly global one. The client, Mr.Mobolaji, sent us an email while he was working in Ireland .Frankly we did not believe the email at all in the beginning.Mobolaji came over to India met us and gave us presentation of the site.He then travelled to Auroville to see more mud buildings as well purchase a machine.
Then while he was staying over for three days in Bangalore we spent whole day and major part of the night on two days working out a design based on teh climatic conditions--which were to maximise the wind movement for the humid equatorial climate. Anne , trainee from Germany helped us in making a 3D-one of the first 3Ds done in the office. It was fun and we called the building "The Butterfly".
After Mobolaji's return , he sent an architect Jimmy over to us to be trained for construction.We did try our best with training Jimmy but he did contribute to Indian economy by purchasing lots of stuff in India.
When the construction was to begin Sharath went to Oru and helped in streamlining the construction as well as scouted for a better site in terms of location and quality of the soil.
The new site changed the design which was made into four replicable parts and Sheel went over to help /train build the same. Sheel stayed for eight months and built quite a large portion of the first phase while experimented and demonstrated different techniques to the construction folks.