 |
| Anna Karina, Jill Ashley and I in front of Asociacion Lema with the sign we made for Utz'iil with repurposed materials. |
Utz’iil Mayan Blossom is a project in progress in the small,
traditional town of San Juan la Laguna on Lago Atitlan in Guatemala.
Utz'iil means to be in a state of good health in Tz'utujil - the language spoken by the people of San Juan and its neighboring municipalities on the lake. The idea behind Utz'iil is to create a space where the young people of San Juan can connect with each other and foreigners.
It is
owned by a local Guatemalan family that also operate an all-womens, natural-dye,
textile collective called Asociacion Lema. Asociación
Lemá is a Tz'utujil women's textile cooperative, the women make hand woven
products using natural dyes from the mountains bordering San Juan la Laguna on
Lake Atitlan. (As their
ancestors have done since the post-classic period of the Mayan civilization!) The
family inherited the piece of land that Mayan Blossom will be built on which currently has one concrete house on it among a small field of coffee plants on one side and various other fruits and
vegetables 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 space with a tea house, Maya ceremonial altar, craft
kiosk, live music stage, guest house, and temazcal - an ecology center for
cultural intersection!
 |
| The path through coffee plants to the house on the property. |
My great friend, Anna Karina, is back in Guatemala helping
to promote the project and raise funding with an IndieGoGo campaign which just
launched! Watch the video here and help support them!
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.
 |
| The Temeszal |
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.
A Natural Building Blog discusses how much more time
efficient tamping earthbags is compared to ramming earth into one tire. “If you’re not
convinced of this, tamp one tire (the way it’s supposed to be done, which takes
20 minutes or so). Then tamp the equivalent (in cubic inches) in earthbags and
see for yourself which is easier. But it gets better, because lower courses can
be filled with gravel (double bagged for durability). I could fill and stack
about one-half to one whole course of earthbags on a small dome in the time it
takes to tamp one tire. That’s a 10 to 20-fold improvement in speed! Swinging a
sledge hammer is gut busting hard work. Tamping earthbags isn’t exactly “easy”
but it’s way easier and faster than doing rammed earth tires. And with
earthbags you can use insulated fill material such as scoria or perlite to
create an insulated foundation.”
Earthbags are flood resistant. Are there polypropylene rice
bags available?
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
What is the best design idea for each different building and
function?
What materials are available that are local, inexpensive,
and sustainable?
 |
| Mountains of bottles they have collected from local bars to use in construction. |
How much funding is available? They are asking for $5,500.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment