Adobe: In the Service of the Sun.

Karol M from Arizona, USA, (Wiki.)

From Guernica Magazine.



I didn’t hear any sounds coming from inside my neighbor’s house, so I stepped back to set down my gift. As I bent over, the door swung wide, spilling cool air into the afternoon. A statuesque woman filled the dark entrance.

Grey hair, dark and heavy as a thundercloud, swirled around her face. I thrust my flowers at her—I’d bought them for her eighty-fifth birthday—then started to retreat even as she dipped her nose in the blossoms. But my neighbor ordered me back. She propped the screen door open with her hip: “Come in. We’ll have a chat.”

I followed her into her living room. I didn’t really want to talk. Being new to the neighborhood, I’d wanted to be nice, but I’d hoped she wasn’t home so I could just leave the flowers. As I perched on a threadbare chintz sofa, she said, “Do you know how your house was made? How they built adobe homes back in the fifties?”

My house is a traditional adobe, made of the original stuff—a concoction of mud, sand, clay, and straw—used in ancient building to grab energy from the sun. Adobe walls expand as they absorb heat, then contract when temperatures drop, pushing warmth into rooms in a type of convection.

Cultures around the world have used the readily available materials for adobe to heat and cool living spaces for millennia, especially where temperatures fluctuate wildly, as they do here in the high desert of New Mexico.


Link to the rest here.