adobe, churches and some thoughts on walls

adobe, churches and some thoughts on walls

I recently took a brief trip down to Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico and drove along the scenic High Road to Taos.  Of course, along the way, in addition to stopping off to admire the vast chaparral landscape, I stopped at a number of the old adobe churches that are some of the oldest still-standing buildings in North America.  

The dominant building material here is adobe - mud and straw bricks, left to dry in the sun.  As you can see in the photo above, the adobe walls are usually coated with another clay/mud layer that helps to protect the exterior surface and renders the entire building into a massive, monolithic volume.

Further accentuating the bulging masses, the height of the unsupported adobe walls required buttresses, not unlike classic North European cathedrals, to keep the walls vaguely vertical.  In the case of many of the churches, these buttresses at the front and corners of the building, were integrated into the wall planes of the church.  The overall effect is one of a gigantic lump of clay, albeit hollowed out for occupation.

These massive structures dominate the landscape, and although they do not in any way try to meld sympathetically with the immediate topography, the consistency of color and form of the slathered adobe, makes them clearly native to their environment.

These are sacred spaces, but also buildings of oppression, often severe.  In most cases, they are the only building over 1 story high and clearly the pride of their communities.  They dominate the landscape and it would seem, at least at one time, the lives of the villages they inhabit.  Their impressive stature lies not in their ornament or even craftsmanship, but their bulk, unyielding and stoic, baking in the landscape.

Colorado vernacular - adobe

barn

A number of months ago a wrote a series of posts about Colorado's vernacular architecture.  I attempted to categorize the vernacular buildings by the dominant material - log, stone or frame.  Sadly missing from that collection was the base building material used by the Spanish colonial settlers in southern Colorado - adobe.

As most folks know, adobe is a sun-dried, hand-formed brick made of local sand, clay, water and some binding fiber like straw.  Adobe construction has been used in many cultures and over thousands of years and is particularly well-suited to hot, dry climates because of its dense thermal mass.

house 01

store

In southern Colorado, along the east and west sides of the San Luis Valley, there are numerous examples of very old adobe structures, many of which have been slowly replaced with more conventional concrete block construction.  In fact, when white-washed, it is very difficult to tell at a glance if the underlying structure is adobe or concrete unit masonry.  The adobe construction is generally limited to single story rectangular buildings that could be simply spanned by vigas or lumber framed roofs.

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When left unadorned, the adobe bricks weather, their edges flaking off, creating a soft, pillowing profile that adds to their impression of mass and weight.  As a testament to their enduring nature, you can find many structures long devoid of their wood roofs and doors, with the adobe still standing.  The precious little dressed lumber that was used is placed to make uniform and contained window and door frames, further accentuating the adobe's soft forms.

window detail

I don't know where the line is struck in southern Colorado, but some place slightly north of Alamosa I would guess the use of adobe was found too incompatible with the increased snow and rain fall.  These adobe structures are certainly part of the Colorado vernacular environment and like the simple log and stone structures of the mountains, they are equally geographically limited.

house 02