Concrete and rammed earth: Desert farm residence

Desert courtyard of the property is a mass of concrete and rammed earth walls that meet the sky with out notice created by Wendell Burnette Architects in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Internet site is a peninsula granite formations, exactly, exactly where Ocotillos marching through a private road, which descends a ridge by an organic wash. Art of this project arises amidst towering saguaros and geological formations such as the depth and complexity of the desert floor is disclosed.

The construction Internet site, below a long private road levels out to the west in a marginal situation by an expansive vista dominated - layers and layers of distant mountain ranges - that appears in the evening embody the drama of Arizona sunset. By collecting the World Wide Web at the community views and the entrance to the street it became important to us - to withdraw the residence as deep shadows -. In the depth and complexity of the desert floor below

If you're starting your feet, in this delicate ground you actually move the feeling, even though you have entered a Zen garden. On the eastern edge of the garden, the sound of water can be heard trickling - remarkably well in our desert - for half the year to imply a broken decomposition granite boulder field and a rush of cattails. At the highest point of the web site, we take pleasure in a large arrow-shaped block of granite pointed west, a special group of volcanic rocks and a massive multi-armed saguaro below. Standing at this point for the 1st time, we felt immediately compelled to stop and get a microcosm of this rewarding Ur-desert landscape as an equally infinite piece of his indomitable sky.

The type for a peaceful courtyard desert gradually began to emerge. The courtyard idea fascinates our customers the comfort supplied - air, light, privacy, security and tranquility - was the one generally preferred in a home. For us it is also the possibility fed to unencumbered by the existing improvements and to do a piece of old time this with a style that developed from the surrounding landscape, its organic energy, its geological composition, its delicacy, a single corral that really would feel like it was usually there. We have begun to ask the question "whether the courtyard walls could actually develop from the website itself, required by the Internet site excavation without import no export?"

We found, by sampling, that the bottom of this page was unique for rammed earth, 1 of the oldest techniques of construction. Kept wooden molds widely take 3 feet higher strata in elevators, then a dry mixture of dirt and cement (3-8%) down with stress pounded in a 12-inch layer of dense thermal mass, lift the elevator to the is reached compacted wall height. It takes a steady base on the ground and a hat to protect from rain and erosion. We raised the foundation required just above the floodplain as a base and then built it into the yard as a piano nobile, through the thick peripheral earthworks, as the elementary type to see from the expansive qualities land and sky - scaled a huge land based country. - Base

The base was on the spot with a single material all about how cast that a wall, a floor, a ramp, a step or bench was knowledgeable as an element of a single contiguous block. The Verde river sooner or later to connect to the Salt River, which tumbles together some of the world's toughest through the lowest point of the valley aggregate, exactly where along with sand and cement, it is harvested for concrete created locally. A "highway concrete mix" with oversized 1½ "unit has been specially selected pigment for this project, and with a small percentage of the earth -. Umbra We wanted to separate the surfaces of the base, the composite qualities of the material, sand, conglomerate gravel, crushed Dirt to reveal in a cement matrix, a window into the Earth of this place, and should therefore be implemented.

The common height of landform follows the style proposals and thus the ground at exactly 24 'mainly organic levels in a segmented monoclinic, virtually imperceptibly up and over and out spirals, where the rugged mass of Hof Art opens to the far west. In conjunction with this geometry, the outer sides of the earth and concrete are the form of the vertical inward faceted 3 degrees. The need for earthworks hat protects the monolithic courtyard diversity as a coherent component of a faceted shadow begins at the outermost edge of the monoclinic toward the inner court and inside, exactly where it stops just short of self-labeling an irregular framework for the sky.

Fair, hollowed fair, Faceted fair Fissured Messe, which cracks open and informed hinges apart as we went into this house by giving Hof approach, their definition of qualities to the Split-Massing is all cracked carefully up to the fittings and fixtures that a certain contact with the hand or eye. For example, the millwork volume is only revealed when content in a contoured bronze cavity with fingertips allow touched the ground open.

Long cracks in the mill-finish steel plate ceiling light show, although the preservation of the upper top quality of nothingness in the evening. mass and the unlikelihood discovered delicacy in itself, it's what the Sonoran Desert its outstanding presence. Because our customers and their guests move into our Engawa in the mass of this landform, we hope, with a hint of surprise, the preciousness of things to rediscover generally.

The battered walls and protect climate-controlled rooms which surround a courtyard. During the whole day, the farm defined by a continuous glass ribbon, the desert ground and sky. In the evening, the glass dissolves and the steel plate ceiling Interior is in the dark sky. The roof is clad in weathered steel and when observed from above, shall enter into the landscape as a deep shadow. Encounters of the site is prioritized by implies of the configuration and the materiality of the project allows for Ur -Understanding of the desert landscape.

Photos: Bill Timmerman

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