Architecture
Most of the buildings are straw bale, adobe brick, and straw clay structures and were built by residents of Lama and/or participants in natural building workshops. Common structures were adobe with vigas and latillas, or a-frames – with names like "Muffin House", "Tower House", and "Orange Room". A massive forest fire in 1996 destroyed 24 of the community's buildings, though the central complex survived.
During its early days, the Lama Foundation was an early innovator within New Mexico in greenhouse design, constructing a so-called "pit greenhouse" with added heat storage to reflect biosphere principles. It permitted year-round cultivation of the community's crops.
Read more about this topic: Lama Foundation
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider, and should be wise in season and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)