No Tech Magazine

Building with Mud and Steel Frames

Building with mud and steel frames is an interesting hybrid between industrial and non-industrial technologies. Two examples:

"Kazakh architect and artist Saken Narynov created a superstructure able to host what we could call an adobe vertical city. In fact, the structure is used as a matrix that can be more or less densely filled with multifamily habitation units. The traditional earth based material thus hybrids with the steel structure in a very unusual and interesting way and the space resulting between the habitation units and the structure is beautifully occupied by mazes of staircases and elevated pathways."

"The design recalls recent works by the Chilean architect Marcelo Cortes, who employs a steel meshwork onto which mud is sprayed, but on a far greater scale. Cortes has developed a "quincha metalica", a form of traditional quincha construction (mud and straw packed between a bamboo or wood frame) that uses a steel frame work."

The Agricultural Building and Equipment Plan List

"The University of Tennessee Extension maintains a collection of over 300 building and equipment plans, and all are now available in electronic format for download. The plans are primarily intended for use in Tennessee, but many are appropriate for other locations as well.

The plans came from many sources. Some were developed in The University of Tennessee Extension Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Department, but most were developed in a cooperative effort with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Cooperative Farm Building Plan Exchange. The Plan Exchange no longer exists, but the plans remain on file and are available." Via The Survivalist Blog.

How to Build an Earthbag Dome

"Domes are the strongest form in nature and easily support enormous forces. They create the most floor space for a given length of wall. There are no wasted corners. The feeling inside is magical. Those who live in domes (and roundhouses) most likely never live in boxes again. Wind flows around domes and does not build up pressure against them."

"You can build domes without wood. You can build domes with minimal tools and materials – no nails, no wood, no plywood, no shingles. This makes domes a good candidate for those who lack carpentry skills and for emergency shelters for disaster areas and war refugees. Give people some rice or grain bags and a little training, and soon they can build their own sturdy, safe shelters."

Step-by-Step Earthbag Building Instructable. Via Make.

The Blackfoot Indians

More than 1,400 Walter McClintock glass lantern slides at the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

"Pittsburgh native Walter McClintock graduated from Yale in 1891. In 1896 he traveled west as a photographer for a federal commission investigating national forests. McClintock became friends with the expedition’s Blackfoot Indian scout, William Jackson or Siksikakoan. When the commission completed its field work, Jackson introduced McClintock to the Blackfoot community of northwestern Montana. Over the next twenty years, supported by the Blackfoot elder Mad Wolf, McClintock made several thousand photographs of the Blackfoot, their homelands, their material culture, and their ceremonies. Like his contemporary, the photographer Edward Curtis, McClintock believed that Indian communities were undergoing swift, dramatic transformations that might obliterate their traditional culture. He sought to create a record of a life-way that might disappear. He wrote books, mounted photographic exhibitions, and delivered numerous public lectures about the Blackfoot."

Below some pictures of their homes.

Construction in Reverse

"Deconstructing, as opposed to demolishing, abandoned buildings will revitalize our cities by reducing waste, creating green jobs, and providing high-quality recycled materials for new construction". Read. More.

Carville & Carzonia

In the 1850s and 60s transit companies used horses to pull railcars on San Francisco streets. When the beasts gave way to progress in the form of cable cars and electric streetcars, the companies sought to dump the obsolete rolling stock. The Market Street Railway Company even placed a newspaper advertisement offering horse cars for $20 (without seats only $10). The result: Carville & Carzonia.