Adobe Residence: a long rammed-earth wall with its lifts visible, a tree in the lawn and the white volumes behind

Residential · Alternative building systems

Adobe Residence

A house built out of the ground it stands on, with every lift of the wall left showing.

The house

The wall is the finish

Rammed earth is made by compacting damp soil in layers between forms. Each layer leaves a line, and the lines are the record of how the wall was built. Here nothing is plastered over: the strata run right through the house, from the street face to the back of the living room.

That decision does the work of several. The walls are thick, so they hold the night’s cool into the afternoon; they are load-bearing, so there is no second structure to hide; and they are made from the site, so the colour of the house is the colour of the ground around it.

What the earth cannot do, steel and timber do. Corten columns carry the long spans where the wall opens. Beamed ceilings run out past the glass and become the soffit of the terrace, so the line of the roof is continuous whether you are in or out.

The openings are few and large. Where the wall stops, it stops completely — a full-height sliding panel, not a window — and the room borrows the garden as its fourth side.

Photographs

Inside the same wall

Living room with a full rammed-earth wall, a beamed timber ceiling and a sliding wall open to the garden
The same wall that faces the street finishes the living room. No plaster, no cladding.
Second interior with the rammed-earth wall, corten column and stone floor
A corten column takes the load where the wall opens.
Close view of the rammed-earth wall, its lifts running across the frame
Each line is one lift, compacted and then the next one on top.
Street face: rammed-earth mass, timber garage doors and white volumes above
From the street, the earth carries and the white volumes float.
Garden face with the lawn, the terrace and the ceiling running out past the glass
The beamed ceiling runs out past the glass and becomes the terrace soffit.
The house at dusk, lit from within, with the rammed-earth mass in shadow
At night the wall goes dark and the openings do the talking.

Selected Work in Mexico. Projects led by our principals over three decades of practice in Mexico, many in collaboration with ARTC Arquitectos, our studio in Mexico.

← All selected work Next: The Rocks →

Contact

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Partnerships

ARTC Company Merge Architectural Group

Credentials

American Institute of Architects Project Management Institute Arizona State Board of Technical Registration

AIA · LEED AP · NCARB · Licensed in the U.S. and Mexico