810-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 27,1986 Adobe Offers Solution To Housing Crisis SKY CITY, N.M. - Bnck by adobe brick, Acoma Indian workmen are rebuilding 400-year old apartments in their ancestral pueblo atop an isolated 367-foot mesa. Since the work began in 1982, about 100 units have been com pleted, says supervisor Dennis Vallo. He hopes the restored two and three-story buildings will induce more Acoma to return to Sky City. All roots of the word Acoma denote “a place that always was," writes historian Alan Minge. The people claim that their mesa-top home about 60 miles west of Albuquerque is the oldest con tinously inhabited city in the United States. Minge says they’ve been there for at least 1,000 years possibly much longer and archeologists agree that Acoma Pueblo has been occupied at least since A.D. 1200. Learned Prom Spanish The enduring technique of making adobe bncks in molds was introduced to the Acoma by Spanish conquistadores in the mid 1500s. Only 50 or so Acoma now live year-round in the pueblo. Their determination to preserve their ancient traditions means that they lack such amenities as electricity and running water. Their adviser on the restoration is a white man from Albuquerque, Paul Graham McHenry Jr., an architect and builder who specializes in adobe construction and sees adobe as a solution to many of the Third World’s in creasingly urgent housing problems. “The worldwide energy crisis, particularly in developing nations, must lead to the utilization of earth as a building material to meet BLACK , RED Ybuow BLUE ut neei VOUeYBfiU.TWi SPORT ups ihyentedimispsiiy moqyoke, muss, irum /NTRODUCeo ATM TOKYO OLYMPICS /M/9&f. S/Mce Ttrn time the sports MOST SUCCESSFUL TERMS Hwe B££nmsov/er MEKRFD WOME/Y. THE VOL- Leyem. court is 59 ft. LON6BY29iFT.imewiTH R RET divipiiio The Court um eoupumves. ever-increasing needs,” McHenry wrote in a paper presented in Ankara, Turkey, last summer. ‘‘We have no other.choice.” McHenry, author of several books on adobe and other earthen buildings, notes that more than half of the world’s people live in houses made of earth. He traces their early development to the Middle East, where he says such structures were built as early as 8000 B.C. in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the International Foundation for Earth Con struction, a three-year-old organization committed to helping solve global housing problems. An estimated 800 million units are needed to house the world’s poor. Foundation president is Eric Carlson of Closter, N.J., former chief of housing for the United Nations. “Our mam interest,” he says, ‘ is in how to transfer some of this relatively simple technology to countries where there are serious housing problems.” The U.N. General Assembly has designated 1987 the International Year of Shelter for the homeless. The foundation’s activities next year will be linked to that theme. Examples Worldwide The well-traveled Carlson lists widespread examples of earthen building; Grenoble, France, site of active training and research in such construction; China, where more than 30 million people dwell in caves; Colombia, where volcanic soil is proving to be an ideal material for pressed brick; and numerous other areas. Carlson pegs much of his hope to a 55-year-old process, developed in California, to mass-produce “stabilized” bricks, waterproof and erosion-resistant, by mixing PEACH GREEK! LTBROWKI IT. BUIE LT GREEN 0 mud with an asphalt emulsion. Building with earth “has the potential for catching on,” he says. McHenry views it as “an uphill battle,” partly because of adobe’s “split image of either poverty or great affluence,” Traditionally, earthen buildings have provided shelter for the world’s neediest people. In the southwestern United States, adobe provided an inexpensive answer to housing needs for generations. Only in the past few decades has it become, in Carlson’s words, a “chic and aesthetic building material." President Reagan lives in an old adobe house, stucco-faced and white-painted, when he goes home to Rancho Cielo in California, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor used to live in an adobe house in Phoenix. McHenry and his sons design and build everything from ex pensive adobe homes to shopping centers in the Albuquerque area. Adobe dominates many of the richest suburbs in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. But McHenry' emphasizes its simplicity and universality. With very little experience and equip ment, anyone can make his own bricks. If he has sufficient skill and diligence, he can build a com fortable home. Thick adobe walls ensure coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. And they are almost soundproof. Do-It-Yourself Adobe In a homemade adobe house in a suburb of Santa Fe live a writer photographer, David Noble, and his artist wife, Ruth Mena. They are members of a legion of erst while easterners who have fallen in love with the Southwest and moved there. * ' * L. tSB£3«- #< * - i-JMW*, "'■’■■'• :a Pfe' l --Sst Holding an adobe brick, Dennis Vallo stands next to one of the 400-year-old apartments being rebuilt at Sky City, N.M., ancient pueblo home of the Acoma Indians. Although adobe is one of the oldest building materials, dating back 10,000 years, it still houses more than half of the world’s people. Unless they’d built it them selves, they couldn’t have afforded the snug house. With a lot of trial and error along the way, they’ve been building it for 12 years. It began with a single room and gradually expanded to include a bedroom, a darkroom for David, a studio for Ruth, and an office, now under construction. T act winter the coimle’s only heating expense was a cord and a half of wood for their living-room stove. “It’s very straightforward and simple,” Noble, a Yale-educated former French teacher, says of the adobe-building process. “It’s very creative and satisfying. It feels very much like home when you build it yourself.” 'fL ;5v r- ■4 . \
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