Monday, February 19, 2007

Textures of Pun Pun

In preparation for the final plaster and painting of the yoga/meditation center, we took a tour of the buildings at Pun Pun to look at different colors and textures and to talk about finishing techniques. Here are some shots from around the farm showing previous experiments with earth plasters and paints...

Window of the intern dorm


Some shots of the VIP guesthouse...




A final plaster with a lot of coarsely chopped straw, for texture.

Dtang's room.

Jo and Peggy's house

Another shot of Jo and Peggy's

An experiment with coarse sand in the final plaster: if the sand isn't fine enough then the plaster tends to crack off. Looks cool though...


The bathroom

If you look closely in the next one you'll see a big crack running through the wall. The bathroom walls were an experiment to see if an adobe wall can withstand direct rain. The top of the wall was sealed with a linseed oil - bees wax mixture (see photo just above).

The parts of the wall just exposed to rain have done fine. The crack and subsequent erosion of the wall occurred because of water being channeled by the thatch roof onto a small area.



Shelves in the office


Shelves in the kitchen...


Pun Pun logo on the office


In and around the intern quarters...



A cob bench


Bottle decorations in my room



Leah contemplates the perfect ratio of sand to clay...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Josh your photos show the harmony innate in the aesthetic of building from and within your environment. The buildings seem to emanate Peace and contemplation and joy~! They are a delight to view! The juxtaposition between these buildings and western buildings that fight against the environment and prevert natural products into unnatural polymers, plastics etc etc is like a picture of the Buddha versus the "Scream" :-O ( My type-set version of that painting!)
Peace~
Judith

Anonymous said...

Josh,

Do the bottles in the wall go through to the outside of the building? Are they like stained glass windows?

Mom

Josh said...

We (meaning Leah) cut the bottles in half and put two "butts" together in the wall. Other designs have put in whole bottles with the necks sticking out one side and the butts on the other. We wanted the "two-butt" effect.