Architecture LIVE 9
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| I am back at the quarry from which I gathered the initial clay sample in the company of the owner who understands exactly what I want. |
| “Aye, it’s daub you want. Sure I grew up in a mud house myself. Used to pull the horsehairs out of the wall and get in trouble for it too!” |
| We are mounted in a 4WD heaving through mud and devestation. |
| “Well that’s the trend now – to go back to the old ways and make houses out of natural materials like clay. Things that can decay naturally.” |
| “Just like ourselves you mean! Go back to the earth where we came from!” |
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| When we reach our destination high above the open quarry Tom encourages a massive excavator into life and starts pawing at the earth. Greats lumps of daub appear, reddish brown tinged with green and yellow. |
| “That’s the stuff alright!” |
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| With a tiny shovel I carefully fill my sample bucket moderating my excitment with a degree of shame that the earth has been so disturbed. |
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| Back at the workshop I dissolve the samples in water and watch them turn to glowing paste. It is cool and silky to the touch, a pale reddish colour in which I see progress. |
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| I am energised enough to begin work on the other side of the roof. I make a scaffold out of peter-post and erect this with Alanna & Siãn’s help. The interior meanwhile, becoming accustomed to use, is crying out to be opened up. |
| The weather however confounds all plans to realise these ambitions immediately. I retreat to the keyboard and the labour of compiling EconoSpaceMaking Information. This strays into general architectural education before homing in on the sweet fruit of mortgage free sheltermaking. |
| The dream couched in this objective is buffeted by challenge. It is here avoidance gains the upper hand, gorging itself on temptation but leaving behind the sweet enticement of freedom. So it is that the world makes and remakes itself, consuming its best intentions. |
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| At moments such as these, when philosophy makes its voice heard above the rain, the cabin is blessed. Here is the cosy fireside of longing, the lodgement wherein the weary can relinquish their burden and partake in the pleasure of their circumstance. |
| The profundity of this truth confounds me, giving birth to the wish that I might ever be able to render it into words, or deliver it in such a way that justice might be done to it. |
| My story and the world’s story are the one story, just as your story is the world’s story. The thin apparal that makes us who we are is but a light dressing draped across the robust invisibility of our substance. We are all one, shuffling towards the selfsame destination blind to this natural alliance. |
| Meanwhile my conscience agitates for work to be done as well as it might be done at this point in time. I match myself against the worst the weather can bring – torrential downpours that threaten to swamp the entire site. Thunder and bright flashes of lightening. This display of change is a picture of the future rolling in from the Atlantic. We can but acknowledge this and prepare ourselves to live under its tutelage. |
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| Architecture LIVE 10 |
| Architecture LIVE 8 |
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Looks bloody brilliant, well done friend!