I had the good fortune of roaming around Portland, Oregon for a few days after my friend’s wedding. Surely I wanted to see what’s been happening on the cob and public art scene there, since it’s been so long since I’ve lived there. The Portland Hostel gazebo was new to me. It is similar to other artfully crafted places created by City Repair, though I’m not sure it was one of their initiatives. Fantastic! I love seeing cob art on the streets of a major city. This was particularly well done and a comfortable sanctuary off of busy Hathorne Blvd.

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Aime Desponds created an amazing casa de barro, or mud house, at his rancho Mogorcito. The process is well documented at his website cobinbaja.blogspot.com.
View the entire building process here »

Aime Desponds was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1940. After graduating from mechanical engineering in the 1960s, he traveled to mexico where he worked at his uncle’s restaurant. Since 1985, Aime worked as a chef at a restaurant in Santa Ana, California until his retirement in 2005.

Aime was seeking a new twist in his life, and in 1992 he found out that while enjoying the culinary art, he also wanted to be involved in drawing and painting. He then enrolled in art classes in some community colleges in Orange County. It was in looking for information on how to build a clay oven, that he discovered natural construction. In 2003 he took a cob workshop with Linda and Ianto Evans in the Santa Barbara mountains. The contact with mud as a building material and a sculptable matter was an amazing discovery that would affect his life forever.

As he plunged his bare hands and feet into the mud, he felt instantly connected with nature. He knew that this fantastic discovery would fit perfectly with his way of thinking and his artful soul. Thus, he decided to build himself a cob house.

David Sheen has toured the globe documenting sustainable architecture and collecting a wealth of interviews with natural builders, activists and teachers. His work will culminate in a film called First Earth. Meanwhile, he is sharing some of the video clips on his YouTube channel. Check out the playlists to view videos by topic.

On a winding alley road in downtown Taos stands a magnificent work of art. Carole Crews, Taos resident and earthen plaster guru, created this mural with Lori Lawyer over 16 years ago. The adobe wall is set on a stone stem wall and capped with cement tiles. The roof has done a great job of protecting the resplendent earthen finish.

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