It is big in Texas but there is no place named Nubian. On my way to the annual ARARA (American Rock Art Research Association) conference in Del Rio I toured the west in a yellow beetle. I visited the Alamo in San Antonio with brother Jay and family and I attended a Nubian vault-building workshop with Adobe Alliance in the Big Bend country of West Texas. This was vault building with the most basic materials. You can create an earthen roof without the use of any type of form. No nails, no wood, no metal parts at all. Of course the walls were already finished when I arrived making the job of creating a vaulted ceiling in a week easier.
The vault, a series of mud-brick catenary arches, literally goes up in mid air. We spent time chipping away at the adobe bricks and placing them upright. Always looking up created this fill in the sky feeling. Each day we created more roof, more shade, more miracles. The bricks stuck together upside down. What a trick!!
The patch of blue became smaller by day. After lifting and placing and chipping for hours at a time it was clear something was just not sitting well. By the last day we were forced to knock it all down. There was a budge on the outside and that created a wave. The look was lovely,but the structure wasn't. Some in the group simply hated the whole idea and to say the least there was not a smile on Simone's face at all when she realized her detached attachment technique for this stage of the project ( She already has masterminded a house and a dome guestroom) was not working. I found pleasure in the destruction. I was attached to the learning process as opposed to the product and the act of taking it apart was as systematic as putting it up was. Attempts were made to save each 50 cent block of adobe, and well, I had fun.
If you'd like some big Texas sky and a earthy project, this would be the place to go. Simone Swan studied with Hassan Fathy who is no longer alive but some say she is the authority on adobe dome and vault construction in the USA. For more info about efforts in the past to shelter the masses you should read this Hassan Fathy’s “Architecture for the Poor”.
