Photo Credit: Wa Samaki Ecosystems
Sometimes, repeating history is a good thing.
Take what Erle Rahaman-Noronha is doing in Freeport, Trinidad. Instead of creating buildings with concrete on his farm, he’s chosen to follow in his ancestors’ footsteps and build with the resources around him.
The BBC reported on Rahaman-Noronha’s work, which is a part of his permaculture nonprofit organization, Wa Samaki Ecosystems. Instead of sending items such as glass bottles and old tires to landfills, Rahaman-Noronha uses them, along with harvested clay, to make beautiful structures.
Celine Ramjit is the eco-architect and sculptor for Wa Samaki. She sees earth building as a way to reconnect with ecosystems.
“It comes down to education,” Ramjit said to the BBC about how people who build with concrete may not know how much they’re harming the environment. “Not considering where materials are coming from and how they are built.”
Clay, however, wasn’t always used to make buildings by the island’s Indigenous peoples.
Tracy Assing, a member of the First Peoples Community in Arima, told the BBC that her ancestors’ homes had thatched roofs. It was their ovens and other small structures that were made of clay.
The switch came when Spain colonized Trinidad in the 1600s. The tapia method combined wood stakes and mud to create the walls of houses.
Historian Glenroy Taitt wrote: “The tapia era ended around the 1940s. … Not only did people stop using tapia to build their houses, but they also began to see the material and the method as low-class and primitive.”
Rahaman-Noronha brought this technique back over half a century later when he created Wa Samaki Ecosystems in 1997. The nonprofit also hosts educational tours and workshops for people in Trinidad to learn more about their relationship to the environment.
While earth building may seem unconventional compared to current building methods in the U.S., it ultimately helps communities save money and resources.
These homes will also last a long time. For example, clay buildings are built above the ground to avoid absorbing too much moisture from dirt. People make them with the longevity of the community and the climate in mind.
Instead of ordering supplies for concrete buildings, people repurpose what is immediately around them. This leads to the creation of functional works of art such as the dragon bench featured by the BBC. If that upcycled metal had gone to a landfill, the bench wouldn’t look the way it does now.
By listening to the land and not immediately tearing it apart, this method allows surrounding ecosystems to coexist with humanity. The ultimate goal, Assing said, is to “[work] with the environment, instead of imposing yourself on it.”
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