Architecture & Design

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Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
UPDESIGN studio was formed with the goal of using design to enrich our lives and make our environments smarter. With every project we do, we hope to improve our culture and community through craft. UPDESIGN studio offers architectural services, custom design, and fabrication. If your project is big or small, give it the decency of good design. To see our work and service pricing, visit WWW.UP-DESIGNSTUDIO.COM

Sunday, March 16, 2014

RAMMED EARTH

Some friends of ours; Alan and Birgit Francis; are building a beautiful home on Flagstaff Mesa this year. Among its many tributes to the site it inhabits, it has a solid connection to the physical land. They had all of the excavated earth (which was a lot due to the awesome water catchment cistern) sifted and sorted so that they could reclaim everything possible from it and they got quite a bit: A pile of sand, a pile of gravel, a pile of sticky clay, and a whole bunch of big beautiful stones that he had masons sculpt into landscape walls that curve across the site, opening space for a drive and a patio. 


They invited a bunch of hands out recently to help turn their stash of reclaimed earthen materials into a massive rammed earth wall that will sit just inside a solarium-style corridor that opens up via Nanawalls onto a south facing courtyard. The result: a heat sink in a mountain climate, in the middle of the home, made from the red dirt that the home sits on. 


I have a lot of praise for this project so expect to hear more about the construction as the progress moves along-- and of course, many cheers to Alan and Birgit for having the solid sensibility to build something so grounded. 


This last image is just a sneak peak: That is steel stair tread embed about to be encapsulated in concrete. Everyone loves a cantilevered stair-- am I right?

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