Utz’iil Mayan Blossom is a project in progress in the small,
traditional town of San Juan la Laguna on Lago Atitlan in Guatemala. It is
owned by a local Guatemalan family that also operate an all-womens, natural-dye,
textile collective called Associacion Lema. The family inherited the piece of
land that Mayan Blossom will be built on which currently has one concrete house on it amongst
a small field of coffee plants on one side and various other plants including
garbanzo beans, bananas, and plantains. There is also a temezcal on the site,
which is a structure for curative sweat lodge traditional in ancient Mesoamerica.
The family would like to transform this land into a beautiful multipurpose
retreat space with additional temezcals, a tea house, and bungalows for accommodation.
My great friend, Anna Karina, is back in Guatemala currently
working on launching an IndieGoGo funding campaign. One of the family members
is doing the layout and architecture and Anna is encouraging the use of natural
materials for the design. She told me that earthquake resistance is a priority
in the design and construction as well as building with local, inexpensive and
sustainable materials, such as materials from the waste stream, including glass
bottles from the lively tourist night life in neighboring towns, which they
have already collected many and transported by tuk tuk.
My focus and goal is to help provide solutions for the
design questions and challenges.
Would straw bale be a good method? Are straw bales accessible
in the area?
Common structures in the area have a concrete base/foundation
or concrete top with recycled materials combined with cob/adobe. Lee Allyn
Davis in Natural Disasters says, “In the towns of the Motagua River Valley and
to the west of Guatemala City, most of the dwellings are constructed of adobe
mud brick walls, which are notoriously unresistant to horizontal motion.”
Flooding is an issue which they are thinking of creating
extra height on the bottom by taking tires and filling them with cob, earth, or
sand and covering the tires with a thinner slab of concrete.
What is the best design idea for each different building and
function?
What materials are available that are local, inexpensive,
and sustainable?
How much funding is available?
How can the building process be used to share the
information and techniques with local people to engage community groups to
participate in building/retrofitting their own homes and centers to spread the beneficial
techniques.
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| Bottle brick wall in San Marcos la Laguna, Guatemala. |
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| Bottle brick wall in San Marcos la Laguna, Guatemala. |
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| In February we made signs for Utz'iil using mostly found materials we rescued from the waste stream. |
A video about the earth bag building in Nepal that withstood the 3 earthquakes in April just 6 days after construction was completed: http://www.3news.co.nz/world/earth-bag-building-still-standing-after-nepal-quake-2015050316#axzz3dkPrQgQO
Video of the construction of the earth bag building: https://vimeo.com/121457665
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