Building With Dirt - The Many Meanings of Resilience
Trail visitors exploring the Larchmont section of the ERT will encounter something they would have to travel to Arizona to see up close in the U.S. Using an ancient technique originating in India, the first rammed earth wall on the East Coast is now a permanent part of the conservation and resilience area at ERT’s Larchmont Library trailhead.
Daniel Edwards of Cured Earth Building Solutions is the sole builder and artist behind the curved earthen structure. This will serve as a seating area, a mini outdoor nature amphitheatre for readings, small performances, educational seminars, and our favorite activity, birdwatching!
Funded in part by a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and matched by the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation, the rammed earth wall completes the ERTF’s vision of a trailhead that tells the story of a changing shoreline and the decades of watershed restoration and resilience efforts that have gone into preserving habitat and outdoor space for all.
Rammed earthen structures use fill dirt, and an inorganic combination of silt, sand and rock all hand pressed together to form a brick like material. This has been a common practice in India when desertification became an issue from overuse of trees as building materials.
In Edwards’ public demonstration of his process, he showed the individual bricks he built for the wall; they look a bit like Lego and fit together in a similar fashion. He uses a custom hand press and all hand tools with no combustion, fire, or sourcing of specific materials in order to make the bricks. They reach their optimal strength after 28 days of curing time.
Edwards has always been interested in conservation efforts and in ways to make the earth better. Learning that construction is responsible for 40% of emissions globally led Edwards to focus on sustainable housing options and eventually launched Cured Earth Building Solutions. Edwards and his wife and children lived in their own earthen-built home in the Roanoke area of Virginia and he is intimately familiar with all the permitting and construction requirements for making such structures both sustainable and liveable. He explained that just getting to this point has been a series of starts and stops, learning and re-learning, and most importantly adapting. The work of creating more sustainable practices, is in and of itself, a lesson in dedication and resilience.
Our own earthen wall here in Norfolk was made with water from the Elizabeth River and as you look closely at the edges of the wall you will see the various types of dirt and natural elements that are mixed into each brick. “The wild loves to take part,” Edwards said, as he peeled back the tarp covering the fill dirt used for the bricks while ants and spiders scurried amongst the rocks.
The public was encouraged to make their own piece of urbanite using this ancient technique. While we scooped the dirt, we incorporated mortar and river water to make a slurry in a cup and then used a tamping hand tool to compress the mixture together to form the “brick”. Encouraged to source from the area around us, some of our pieces are now embedded with the feathers of a heron, the falling crepe myrtle flowers, the magnolia bud, and the leaves from the local trees. Each piece is a small fossil of this particular moment.
We are grateful that this wall serves as both a model for resilience and sustainable building, but also a functional piece of public art for all to enjoy.