Architecture Addiction, The Official Blog of

I just learned about Kiko Denzer. He builds with earth. And his motto is “that what we learn to do, we learn by doing.” For those of you who know about my fascination with Nader Khalili, you can see why I had to learn more about Kiko.

Now, I’ll delight you with some images of Kiko’s work. Then, I’ll tell you more about his book and how to get it.

Kiko wrote the book Build Your Own Earth Oven: A Low-Cost Wood-Fired Mud Oven; Simple Sourdough Bread; Perfect Loaves.

Denzer, an artist and builder, creates beautiful wood-fired ovens using the most widely available building material: dirt. Some earth ovens are plain while others are formed into the shape of animals or human faces. Denzer offers an explanation of basic concepts such as material selection, oven location, and design and then guides readers through the construction of their own oven. Earth ovens could be produced most anywhere using Denzer’s instructions; he even shows how to build a weatherproof roof. A sourdough bread recipe is included. Appealing to a diverse audience of bakers, outdoor cooks, traditional crafts persons, and perhaps even homeschoolers looking for a project, this title should be part of most public library collections. - Review from Library Journal

This brand new, completely re-written edition features:

• revised text: updated, expanded, and completely re-organized so as to simplify the making of
• a super-insulated design that holds heat longer and burns less fuel; as well as
• a simplified, 4-step recipe for making really good (wholegrain) sourdough bread - written by Hannah Field, a former professional baker who has worked in wood fired and organic bakeries on both sides of the Atlantic (also the author’s wife).
• Also: a foreword by Alan Scott, grandfather of wood-fired ovens and artisan bread, co-author (with Dan Wing) of The Bread Builders, and an inspiration to many aspiring artisans;
• an 8-page color gallery of beautiful ovens sculpted both by the author, as well as readers who wanted to share their work;
• innovations and variations, like mobile ovens, super-efficient “rocket” ovens, hay-box cookers, and more.

You can find it for sale in the bookstore under Shelter/Building or at Amazon.

Build Your Own Earth Oven is a fully-illustrated handbook for making a simple, wood-fired, masonry-style oven. It provides clear, step-by-step instructions for building and firing the oven, as well as complete directions for making sourdough bread in the best (and simplest) artisan tradition.

Earth ovens are as simple as a southwestern horno or European bee-hive oven and every bit as effective as a fancy brick hearth or modern, steam-injected commercial oven. The dense, three-to-twelve inch thick earthen walls store the heat of the fire; after the hot coals are removed, the hot walls radiate a steady, intense heat for hours. The resulting steamy environment is essential for the crisp, flavorful crusts of true hearth loaves, and you can easily build it for less than the price of a couple of fancy dough-rising baskets!

If you like to cook outdoors, an earth oven can also transform fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs into delicious pies, pizzas, and other creations (one of my favorites is fresh vegetables, herbs, and potatoes drizzled with olive oil). Pizza cooks to perfection in three minutes, and you can even use the residual heat to dry your surplus garden produce, and incubate your home-made yogurt!

Building with earth is safe, easy, inexpensive, and extraordinarily effective. Good building soil is usually right under your feet! Many will find it in their back yards. Use it plain, or mixed with sand and straw. Build the simplest oven in a day! Adding a roof and foundation makes it permanent. The simple, round shape makes a beautiful garden sculpture, or can be sculpted into a fire-breathing dragon!

It is a project that appeals to bakers, builders, and beginners of all kinds: The serious or aspiring baker who wants the best lo-cost oven for their bread; Gardeners and outdoor cooks who want a centerpiece for a beautiful outdoor kitchen; People interested in creative uses of low-cost materials and simple technologies; and Teachers who want a multi-faceted, experiential learning experience for their students (the book has been successful with everyone from third-graders to adults).

Illustrated by the author with over a hundred drawings and photos, it includes color pictures of sculpted ovens and their builders, as well as further references on food, baking, and building.

A note from Kiko about the book:

The success of this book has been a (welcome!) surprise. Hand Print Press was launched with a fraternal, good-faith cash loan and 2,500 copies of a book about mud ovens. I thought I might be able to make some interesting sculpture with the books, if nothing else. 20,000 copies and about ten years later, Artisan bread is a multi-billion dollar industry, and sales of “artisanal” bread are growing four times faster than the business as a whole, and almost 20 times faster than white bread.*
*Source: www.nytimes.com, market research from Mintel Consumer Intelligence

I suppose in itself that isn’t so surprising. Specialty foods are a pretty safe bet, if you’re a betting kind of person and looking for faddish things to bet on. What has surprised me is the reception the book has gotten from all kinds of folks. Maybe it’s just a fluke of marketing and good fortune. Maybe it’s just the crest of the fad. Maybe (just maybe), it’s a confirmation of the basic precept of this little press: that what we learn to do, we learn by doing. And what can shopping teach us except debt and dissatisfaction? Man lives not by shopping alone. Nor does woman. Nor do we learn anything essential by it.

Home-made bread, on the other hand, is a basic (and tasty) antidote to buying. OK, that makes sense. And mud is simple and cheap and makes a good oven. OK. But it still doesn’t explain the kind of pride and pleasure evident in the notes and letters I’ve gotten from happy oven builders.

When I wrote it, I was mostly concerned about offering a way to make a good, cheap oven; the “art” was just sprinkled in because I’m a sculptor. But now I wonder? Maybe people want “artisan” bread because a good loaf, like good art, is unique and individual; an event that becomes a part of you.

Perhaps the ovens are real art that anyone can make; perhaps the bread is real food that anyone can make; perhaps, together, they are an antidote to the slavery of consumption, the endless earning of dollars to buy stuff we don’t need to satisfy desires we can’t name, understand, or control.

Perhaps artisan bread means more than just “complexity of flavors,” but also a complexity of relationships: In a traditional artisan economy, different artisans each made something essential to all the others. Their trade was true trade, not just an exchange of dollars, but an intimate interweaving of life and fortune. For example:

“Bernard Clavel, a French writer whose father was a baker, wrote that the bakeshop was on the way to local saltworks, and that his mother would open up at five in the morning so that the salters could buy bread on their way to work. His father sold bread to the wine-growers, some of whom gave a cask a wine in exchange, and to the wood-cutter (huge eight-pound loaves), who in return would deliver the wood needed to fire the bread-oven. When the baker ran out of salt, he would drive up to the saltworks to pick up a sack, paid for - in bread.” [see Clavel’s introduction to The Book of Bread, by Jerome Assire, Flammarion, 1996, Cited in Cooking with Fire in Public Spaces, Friends of Dufferin Grove Park.]

Obviously, we no longer live in such a society, but as much as people hunger for good bread, they also hunger for the kind and quality of relationship that produces good bread. I’m not saying a mud oven is any kind of answer, but it is extraordinary how the simple act of making an oven can give people a confidence in their own ability to participate in and enrich their own lives.

Since that first printing, Earth Ovens have been seen in Country Garden Magazine, Mother Earth News, The Chicago Tribune, the UK’s Petit Propos Culinaire and Permaculture Magazine, among others. I’ve heard from mainstream, weekend gardeners to “simple living,” back-to-the-land, “fringe"dwellers, Peace-Corps volunteers, to do-it-yourselfers, third-graders, graduating seniors, and other artists of all ages!

I am grateful, and curious to see what happens next.

– Kiko Denzer

Read Kiko’s blog and buy his book.

I just read this in designboom. It’s pretty awesome.

(It’s not just you; they really don’t capitalize the first letter of any sentence.)

designboom has dedicated a large amount of time to learn more about clay - one of the earliest natural building materials in history of men. our intent is to promote earth also as a building material of the future. it represents an excellent alternative to cement whose manufacture releases considerable quantities of CO2. individual housing units and small apartment buildings can easily be built from earth in every part of the world.

however, concrete remains an essential material for high-rise construction. the research effort should be therefore two-pronged: tailoring earth to the needs of modern construction and making concrete ‘greener’.

in this first article of a series, which we will publish in the upcoming weeks, we’ll examine a few ancient building techniques.

the musgum, an ethnic group in far north province in cameroon, created their homes from compressed sun-dried mud. the tall conical dwellings, in the shape of a shell (artillery), featured geometric raised patterns.

what strikes at first sight is their almost organic simplicity, a second reading reveals the functions behind the forms. the walls of the houses are thicker at the base than at the summit, which increases the stability of the building.

the domed huts of the musgum people are built in shaped mud, a variant of cob. cob building is the most widely used technique in the world, since no tools are needed - hands, earth and water are enough.

the name of these houses (’cases obos’) comes from their similarity with the profile of shells. it is very close to the catenary arch, the ideal mathematical form to bear a maximum weight with minimal material. this profile also reduces the pressure effect of the impact of water drops on the walls. furthermore, the extraordinary height (up to 9 meters) of these houses provides a comfort climate during hot days. the top of the house is pierced with a circular opening, allowing the air to circulate, resulting in the sensation of freshness.

today, these buildings have become somewhat obsolete, with only a few groups still practicing this ‘cases obos’ type of construction.

curves and grooves are the language of natural forms.

the musgum house follows the profile of shells - the arc of a chain.

bows and vaults obtained in this way can be very slim and allow the use of a minimum of material for maximum rigidity. the arc adopting the inverted profile (figure below) will only work in compression and does not produces parasitic twisting or bending moments.

the decorative surface allows for further refinement and individualization. the veins are also contributing to the drainage of rain. the musgum houses require regular maintenance of the coating and the veins allow people to climb atop the building.

the construction technique of musgum clay houses is currently also mentioned in the exhibition ‘ma terre premiere pour construire demain’. it explores how and why we should build with earth. on show at the cité des science et de l’industrie, paris until june 10th, 2010.

I was just reading this article by Perry Marshall about how the American Education system turns people into obedient drones to service a planned economy. That’s the short version. If you want the long version, you should read everything by John Taylor Gatto. You should read the works of John Holt, too, while you’re at it.

Something about what Perry Marshall wrote made me think of the licensing process for becoming, technically, legally, an “architect.”

Lee Milteer, who is a professional speaker and coach, was asked to speak at a conference of certified professional trainers. When she told them she charges $250 per hour for her personal coaching services, they were outraged. “You have no right to charge $250 per hour! Certified Professional Trainers are only supposed to charge $85 per hour. And you’re not even certified!”

Lee replied “Who says I have to be certified? And who says what I should be able to charge? And who certified the people who are handing out the certifications?”
That really made them mad.

Most people don’t realize that they’re living in an artificially constructed world in which the only reason others have power over them is that they allow them to have the power. Most of the people who certify you are actually your competitors. It’s their job to impede your progress. Stop giving them permission.

You do not wait for someone else to tell you it’s OK to be an expert, or innovate, or claim a title, or dispense advise. You just do it – and you let the laws of supply and demand take care of the rest.

If you have this idea in your head that you need to wait for someone’s permission, you need to re-examine your assumptions, and the education that formed those assumptions.

You can find this in a 15-page PDF, downloadable here.

If you’re not ar architect, or an architecture student, here is what you currently must do in order to legally call yourself an architect:

Architects must be licensed before they can practice architecture as or call themselves an architect.

There are four main steps to becoming an architect.

Education
In most states, to become licensed, candidates must earn a professional degree in architecture from one of the more than 100 schools of architecture that have degree programs accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). However, each state architectural registration board sets its own standards, so graduation from a non-accredited program may meet the educational requirement for licensing in a few states.

Three types of professional degrees in architecture are available:

Bachelor of Architecture: Accredited degree programs awarding the B. Arch. degree must require a minimum of 150 semester credit hours, or the quarter-hour equivalent, in academic coursework in professional studies and electives.

Master of Architecture: Accredited degree programs awarding the M. Arch. degree must require a minimum of 168 semester credit hours, or the quarter-hour 10 equivalent, of which 30 semester credit hours, or the quarter-hour equivalent, must be at the graduate level, in academic coursework in professional studies and electives.

Doctor of Architecture: Accredited degree programs awarding the D. Arch. degree must require either an undergraduate baccalaureate degree or a minimum of 120 undergraduate semester credit hours, or the undergraduate-level quarterhour equivalent, and a minimum of 90 graduate-level semester credit hours, or the graduate-level quarter-hour equivalent, in academic coursework in professional studies and electives.

Internship
Most state architectural registration boards require architecture graduates to complete an internship in order to become licensed. The Intern Development Program (IDP) is a comprehensive training program created to ensure that interns in the architecture profession gain the knowledge and skills required for the independent practice of architecture.

Most new graduates complete their training period by working as interns at architectural firms. Interns in architectural firms may assist in the design of one part of a project, help prepare architectural documents or drawings, build models, or prepare construction drawings on CADD. Interns also may research building codes and materials or write specifications for building materials, installation criteria, the quality of finishes, and other related details.

Examination
All 54 U.S. jurisdictions require the completion of the Architect Registration Examination (ARE). The examination is broken into seven divisions consisting of multiple choice and graphical questions. The eligibility period for completion of all divisions of the exam varies by state.

Licensure
All jurisdictions require individuals to be licensed (registered) before they may call themselves architects and contract to provide architectural services. During the time between graduation and becoming licensed, architecture school graduates generally work in the field under the supervision of a licensed architect who takes legal responsibility for all work. Licensing requirements include a professional degree in architecture, a period of practical training or internship, and passing the ARE. You must contact your registration board to find out their requirements and complete the licensure process.

Before 1897, no legal definition of “architect,” nor any legal requirements concerning the use of the title or the provision of architectural services, existed. In that year, however, Illinois became the first state to adopt an architectural licensing law. It would take more than 50 years for all of the states to follow suit and adopt licensing laws. Today the AIA works in conjunction with the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) to develop and recommend standards regulating the practice of architecture.

Read more about the history of the AIA