ABOUT ADOBE
The history of earthen building systems dates back at least 10,000 years, and yet it remains an inventive and incredibly creative world. Each site location demands a new assessment and understanding of materials, structural systems, and connections. The work is directly a part of place, availability, and the collective knowledge of the people who built it. Details for connections and structural systems are often invented. There is no standard for earthen systems; it is a design build concept. Decisions are both functional and aesthetic, a muscle memory parallel to object design, or making. Adobe reveals itself as a balance between construction and ruin; soil wants to return to the earth, and the human hand is what molds it as architecture.
Adobe is the primary building material in Marfa. Over the years of restoring and repairing existing structures in and around Marfa, SILLA has had the good fortune to learn from and work with some amazing people in the earthen building world: Pat Taylor (Adobe Conservation Specialist), Sonya Cooper (Civil engineer specializing in historic earthen buildings), Angelyn Bass (Research Assistant Professor Principal Investigator, Archaeological Sites Conservation Grants Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico), Douglas Porter ( Research assistant professor the university of Vermont) . David Keller (archeologist, historian, and historic preservationist specializing in the Big Bend region of Texas), and Jake Barrow (Program Director at Cornerstones Community Partnerships, and others.
New Mexico.
2023
A long-term collaboration with the friends of the Ruidosa church to restore and maintain the church
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Mudd House, Beal House, Tokerud
2008-
Marfa is home to SILLA. Over the years we have been involved in many adobe projects, always with the object of saving the beautiful earthen buildings that make up the feel of our town.
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Big Bend National Park TX.
2021
The oldest standing adobe structure in Big Bend National Park. SILLA worked with David Keller and the Big Bend Conservancy to do structural and plaster repairs.
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