Building to the sun
Two authors passionate about sustainable housing discuss their work at SOMOS
‘HOUSE GODS: SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS AND RENEGADE BUILDERS’
By Jim Kristofic
University of New Mexico (2022, 220 pp.)
“We need to live in better buildings,” announces author Kristofic, who grew up in Navajo (Diné) country. “And maybe we need to live in these buildings so that we can live with ourselves.”
The problem about our shelters — despite our best intentions of “sustainability” — is that they eat up about half of the energy we generate, 72 percent of all electricity and 125 percent more water than they did 50 years ago, according to the author. “Each of these buildings is a fresh parasite on the sacred Earth,” he writes. “Our buildings are killing our world.”
Kristofic’s dire warnings of climate breakdown are not new, but his approach is simple and revolutionary. He has tracked down in our neck of the woods — Northern New Mexico — nine conscientious builders who are actually putting in place sustainable structures that are meant to last forever — that is, shelters that are worthy of what he calls the House Gods, according to the Diné. The House Gods bring strength, wisdom, good health and integrity to a home, but we need to make those homes worthy of the House Gods and show “we are a people to be proud of, to whom the gods will listen.”
“The solutions go beyond buying a trailer or Weather King shed, as many
AUTHORS KRISTOFIC AND MCCRAE WILL BE SPEAKING ABOUT THEIR BOOKS
Sunday (Aug. 28) at 4 p.m. at SOMOS. Go to somostaos.org. families have done,” urges Kristofic, whose most recent work is “Send a Runner” (with Edison Eskeets). We need proper “hoghans.”
With first one Stray Hearts shelter dog, the problematic but ultimately devoted Rainey, then another, a sad little fellow named Ricky, the author heads out to far-flung recesses in Mora and Río Arriba counties in search of these renegade builders. Willy Groffman in Mora has built a kind a super post-and-beam greenhouse that acts like a church of sun. “This is where I get the truth,” he tells the author, showing him around. “This is where I get inspired. I build to the sun.”
In Two Peaks, Mark Myers displays his longtime passion for solar. Photographer Paul O’Connor, in his quirky Arroyo Hondo complex, bucked the Earthship manual’s use of south-facing sloped glass windows and, instead, followed an intuitive design that works wonders. Architect Mark Goldman shows the author the visionary earthen construction of the Dream Tree Shelter, designed and built in the heart of Taos by Goldman in 1998 as a kind of “improvisational architecture,” like jazz. And Bob and Julie Dunsmore’s strawbale home in El Rito proves one shelter where the House Gods are always welcome.
Why did these people choose to build this way? Many of the builders speak of pain in their past lives. One speaks of “sovereignty,” as in, what we hope a house can grant us rather than allowing it to imprison us. Or, muses the author in this engaging and useful meditation, perhaps it was the sense of compassion that spurred these builders on their quest.
If we do not heed these inventive solutions, warns the author: “We are in for a fearing time, where the spirits of misguided men at their slide rules will haunt us from the sky.”
‘MUD, SPACE AND SPIRIT: HANDMADE ADOBES’
By Virginia Gray and Alan McCrae Photography by Wayne McCallCapra Press (1976, 95 pp.)
In a reprint of a now-classic volume, first published in 1976, authors Gray and McCrae present early portraits of people “going back to the land,” or, as the dozen or so examples here illustrate, going into the land, like “visionary troglodytes.” The work was conceived as more than “a simple portrayal of individual imaginations working with mud; a fantasy book for readers locked in urban life, or an encouragement to freer spirits,” as noted in the preface by Noel Young.
The art of adobe building was not new, of course, as evinced by the longstanding Taos Pueblo, but seemed truly revolutionary to the Anglo transplants in the Southwest. With evocative black-and-white photos, the text is mostly fashioned as interviews with the various owners about their homes: Sally Edelman’s Dragon House, in the foothills of the mountain; painter Ed and Vicki Sandoval’s Seven Levels; Ted Ullman’s Unicorn House; Harry and Lorene Pearson’s Grotto houses; John and Georgie McGowan’s Pit House, and many others.
Organic, geared toward sources of light and water, with curving walls and whimsical fireplaces, these “handmade” structures (Anita Rodriguez contributes an essay on the “vanishing enjarradora”) often had to be modified when the money ran out. The structures are fluid, communal living spaces, built to be in harmony with nature — “the only way to protect the dwindling energy resources of the Earth.”