/  by Thomas DeVoss

living-consciously:

Here’s a utilitarian use for your recyclables. In Warnes, 30km from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, former lawyer Ingrid Vaca Díez is helping poor families build affordable housing using the stuff we normally throw away.

Her project, Centro Ecoagroturistico (EcoAgroTouristic Center) was born from the idea of using unwanted material to build eco-friendly houses. With six other like-minded women, she collected four thousand plastic bottles, known as pet, from friends, local schools and bountiful garbage dumps to obtain the materials needed for their work.

The bottles were filled with sand, earth or sawdust to make them hard, then bound to each other using cement, one on top of the other. When that work was completed, another coat of cement, clay or straw was applied to both sides to reinforce the wall.

Eighty-one bottles are needed to create one square meter and at least ten thousand are needed to build one small house with two bedrooms, living/dining area, kitchen and bathroom.

/  by Thomas DeVoss

archatlas:

Refurbishment in la Cerdanya dom-arquitectura

This project takes place in a small village in La Cerdanya, on the north valley side, south oriented the village’s heart consist on 20 houses, surrounded by fields and pastures where farming and agriculture are the main activities. Breathtaking views of the Cadi mountains make of this setting a piece of nature paradise.

Most of the buildings in the village organized enclosing an outside space called the “era”. The village plan shows how the old constructions were built in order to create ensembles of living and working units arranged around exterior enclosed spaces.  Overall they form a grid-like pattern of barns and stables as well as houses.

One set of these buildings consisting on a haystack, a barn, a warehouse, a small dwelling and a “badiu” (traditional backyard), pertained to our client who wished this space to be re-designed and re-arranged to become his home and additional guest areas.

Images and text by dom-arquitectura

/  by Thomas DeVoss

archatlas:

Nikolay Polissk 

The unique shift carried out by Nikolay Polissky consists in a change in the way that art functions. His works are created by the inhabitants of the village of Nikola-Lenivets. This fact should not be underestimated: the ideas for the works naturally come from Polissky — it never occurred to the villagers themselves to build a ziggurat of hay or an aqueduct from snow. But at the same time it should not be underestimated. No one in the world has ever had the idea of crossing conceptualism with folk craftwork.

Images and text via + via

/  by Thomas DeVoss

archatlas:

Joanneumsviertel  Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos

“The Joanneumsviertel of Graz is comprised of three buildings from different periods and with different functions that up to now have had their backs turned toward one another and faced a residual rear courtyard: the Museum of Natural History from the eighteenth century; the Regional Library of Styria; and the New Gallery of Contemporary Art, built at the end of the nineteenth century. Addressing each of these organisms belonging to the same institution, the project emerged from the need to endow the complex with a common means of access, welcoming spaces, a conference hall, reading areas and services, along with a lower level for archives and storage. Instead of giving in to the temptation of developing an iconic intervention, as has often happened in recent museum expansions, however, the project offered a unique opportunity to carry out an at once urban and architectural transformation. Whereas the historic center of Graz is known for its expressive “roofscape,” our proposal developed entirely below ground: we simply defined a new pavement that, like a large carpet, takes up the entire exterior space between the buildings and conceals below ground those spaces housing the required program.”