Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 2
Elevation of Wimberley House of Healing. (Living Architecture)
living architecture,” a breathing, moving, dancing thing that wraps and plays
about its occupants like a mother or a lover, with caring open hands lifting
through layer upon layer of overlapping spaces, fields of energy, and con-
scious thought.
All good architecture begins in the ground.The site in Wimberley,Texas
slopes gently southwards to Lone Man Creek.At the water's edge, giant 20-
ton limestone boulders cantilever over cool, green pools. The water falls
from a strong, small dam and echoes in lapping ripples, slowly carving the
stones' underbelly.This place is already and always a living architecture.
And so the site and the energy of the cedars and the oaks all lent their
voices to the carving of the thing.
Living Architecture emerges from the mundane and the simple, the quiet
things: straw and mud and spit and sweat. The Wimberley House of Heal-
ing is constructed from bales of straw gathered from fields not 3 hours dis-
tant from the site. Instead of being burned off, as with most wheat chaff,
the straw is baled by a farmer who knows its intended use—the construc-
tion of a special home—and he thinks of this as his machine bales the straw.
And the bales of straw too seem to think for themselves. The bales and
the height of two steps at a time, each and together being a lazy 15 inches
tall, allow the foundation to cascade in perfect cadence with the slope.
From the top then to the bottom of the home six levels emerge and the
seventh rises up and out of the building; a conscious departure from the
mundane into the divine.
