Message #20285

[Bianca]

MM: I think that one of the big problems with using traditional materials and traditional techniques is that today's engineers and code writers have locked themselves into current construction technology. They aren't looking at the tradition and why traditional methods worked within the tradition. I've faced that problem many, many times here in the us, bringing brick makers from Mexico or working with adobe. There is finally an adobe code in New Mexico, but you have to use stabilized adobe. That's because the people who write these regulations don't understand how adobe works. Try to build a house out of unstabilized adobe [as used in traditional construction] just about anywhere in this country and they'll laugh you out of the building-permit office.

DD: Is this a matter of vested interests, habit or what?

MM: Well, there is some of that. I was commissioned to do a vault of wood-fired brick. I brought it over, the engineer saw it, and the project was killed because it's a "weak" brick. It was more than structurally adequate, but it just wasn't what he was used to.

DD: Are there places in this country where there is a more progressive attitude toward these things?

MM: You have to have a ranch of your own somewhere. There's an old saying in Mexico that for a good house, you need good shoes and a good hat—that is, a good foundation and a good roof. I can take you to jungle areas where it rains all the time, and there's unstabilized adobe that's been there for three hundred years—but try to get that message through the building-permit offices here.

RA: I believe there has been some success in getting building codes adjusted for straw-bale buildings. Some of those have been built here in central Texas, haven't they?

MM: Well, that's kind of separate. The pressure of that group right now is incredibly strong compared to that for adobe.