I spent most of my impressionable years in Afghanistan and India, surrounded by indigenous architecture. It was during this time, I suspect, that I subconsciously developed the passion for honesty, modesty and harmony.
When I studied architecture, I explored how the city embodies myths that connect them to the world and ground urban dweller’s lives. I worked on the premise that, notwithstanding progress and modern mobility, a significant aspect of our being remains biological. In his writings on the biological basis of psychoanalysis, Peter Fuller shows how myths arise from the same substratum as dreams, and that they play a significant role in how we engage the world. These myths are neither fiction nor flights of fantasy, but the concrete manifestations of this mythopoetic dimension of our being.
Looking young and consuming the ever-new may be rituals of the mechanical reproduction age, but life holds more. By rejecting process movement or mechanical imagery as the basis for architecture, my work explores the ground of being, where it interacts with the structure and “feel” of the city. I have attempted to show how the city, through its buildings, might form spatial realms suffused with character and mood where lives could be fruitfully enacted.
Throughout my studies I had a passion for what I call “primitive” (or “indigenous”) architecture. By primitive I don’t mean backward, but quite the opposite—to be primus means to be the first. To be at the beginning. It’s good for the mind to go back to the beginning, because the start of any established human activity is its most wonderful moment. This view can teach us the fundamental principles of each invention, showing us that another path is possible.
Most “primitive” anonymous buildings were constructed in response to such conditions as climate, orientation and the easy availability of building materials. As building materials dictated the form of the dwelling, builders were sensitive to it. They worked with their materials, not against them as in so much of today’s architecture.
During the summer of 1996, I finally embarked on my long-awaited journey (after working for several years in London practices) to discover indigenous materials and techniques. One of my earliest and most exciting discoveries was the arch. Here was a form that occurs all around us in nature. The arch frees us of the need to use wood, and materials such as concrete and steel, which are high in embodied energy. All naturally occurring structures use the arch form as their structural element. It is all around us.
I first learned about Earth Architecture from Iranian-born visionary architect Nader Khalili during an internship at his art and architecture school, Cal Earth. The Islamic influence wasn’t new, due to my years spent in Afghanistan, but the materials and techniques were. My passion for the arch has nothing to do with the dome or vault, or any type of symmetrical Islamic architecture. It has to do with nature. I didn’t want to necessarily imitate nature. I wanted to feel the freedom that nature appears to possess. I had experienced so many constraints in the world I came from; I wanted to escape it. I wanted to become free. I wanted to explore my strength, to understand and celebrate the possibilities of the earth in my hands.
As I worked with this totally fluid material, I felt its lack of constraints, its freedom. I wanted it to lead me. I wanted to allow the earth that freedom. I didn’t want to make it do something that imitated another material. I wanted to set it free, to listen to it. I believe that all buildings should be designed and built with this sensitivity. To me it has become one of the most important factors in the design process. In fact, designing and building are to me like sculpting. When a sculptor carves into the rock he listens to the rock telling him what it should become. Creating a dwelling is the same to me; it’s about understanding the material, the needs of the inhabitant, the climate, being in harmony with the environment and, most of all, feeling passion during the process.
At the moment, my ideal house is one that lives in harmony with its environment—a house that is difficult to notice, like an animal that blends into its surroundings. So many houses appear like warts on our landscape. When you drive through the countryside, how much nicer would it be if you couldn’t see the houses, if they harmoniously blended in, like the houses in Afghanistan that climb the hillsides and are made of the same earth as the hillside. Only at night, when the lights come on, do you see the extent of development.
These are some of the things that I aimed to achieve with my Earthmother Dwelling that I built at Cal-Earth. The Earthmother Dwelling was built in close dialogue with the essence of the site—listening to the elements and letting the earth tell me what it wanted to become. Being free from the architectural icons of traditional cultures. Listening openly to my inner voices, letting them guide me to achieve coherence and happiness.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Paulina Wojciechowska, an architect, studied earth building at CAL-Earth Californian Institute of Earth Art and Architecture in the Mohave Desert. She later studied with the Canelo Project and worked several projects for Yaqui Indians close to Hermosillo in Northern Mexico (houses for poor women living in the slums of Cuidad Obregon in Mexico). She later worked with Sioux Indians (Oglala) at Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, teaching Earthbag construction to construct an Earth House. For more information or to contact her, visit her website Earth Hands & Houses and her blog http://earthhandsandhouses.blogspot.com/
image: Earthworm (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
