A month exploring Jamaica, its building traditions and its dances cultures.

An adventure to design and build with building young Caribbean architects and craftsman.

In Jamaica, the french collective architect builders Touraterre, will collaborate with Melissa, King and their children, a Canadian Jamaican family. They are involved in an environmentally friendly cottage project along with an agro ecology permaculture project.

To carry out this project we will collaborate with the Caribbean School of Architecture in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of Technology Jamaica.

This participative innovative project ambitions to help trigger the contemporary raw earth construction in the Caribbean, where concrete building is today dominant.

In April 2016, back Touraterre for the drawing, building and dancing workshop, one month “made in Jamaica” on the theme “Dance and Architecture”.

This project brings two families toward building differently: Melissa King and their children. And the family Touraterre: architects, builders, craftsman, engineers and travelers!

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« WHY ? »

Each year, humanity is consuming 6 billions cubic meters of concrete, or one cubic meters per habitant, without real possibilities of recycling. For each cubic meter, 100 liters of oil are need for production and transport. Furthermore, concrete makes our landscapes look alike anywhere you go. And finally, most of the time, the use of concrete means reduction of construction knowledge legacy, and poor humans relations during the construction.

An alternative to concrete is all yet implemented since the beginning of time: the earth.

This local building material requires little or no transport, no oil and is infinitely recyclable. In recent years, It is subject to numerous technical innovations. Faced with environmental, cultural and socio-economic issues of our time, raw earth is an essential and irreplaceable building material combining expertise, solidarity during the construction and aesthetic research. Today, even the luxury architecture seized this material.

Manifeste sur la construction en Terre

Tucson House, Rick Joy Architecture, Arizona

Rawearth market, Koudougou, Burkina Faso

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We aim to promote this environmentally friendly material, modern and accessible to all, to work together to develop housing projects for the greatest number.

« HOW ? »

Touraterre, a collective of architect’s builders, gathers multiple skills to ensure the follow up of a project from its conception to its realization (architects, professional builders, managers, etc.) Our team gathered during construction workshops. Through our mobile workshops, our goal is to exchange expertise and knowledge in order to promote an ecological architectural vision, responsible, attractive and happy.

Explorez nos architectures ici sur touraterre.com

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« WHAT ? »

Touraterre proposes to work with Melissa, King and their children, a Jamaican Canadian family that engages in a project of responsible eco lodges. We offer not only to build an earthen lodge, but especially to exchange with the Caribbean School of Architecture in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of Technology, Jamaica, to share vision and expertise on raw earth construction in this region of the Caribbean.

This project was conceived in collaboration with:

- The Jamaican Tourist Board, which seeks to develop a tourism more honest and more respectful of people and landscapes of the island.

- The Caribbean School of Architecture in Kingston, with whom we will share and work on the project.

- The Jamaican Institute of Architects, which will broadcast the call for participation.

- CRAterre ENSAG

- Tribune UNESCO for earth architecture.

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Touraterre and its raw earth approach

The island territories are economically more fragile and dependent on imports. They are particularly concerned with the relevance of a local resource to build.

Today's world provides us with plenty of techniques, surprising technologies, know how to use it make sense in a given context. Our project methodology allows us to adapt to a variety of contexts, projects and very different needs.

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Anna Herringer, Chantier participatif d'une école en terre crue et bambou au Bangladesh

Dance & Architecture in Jamaica

This is the first architecture studio that Touraterre organizes abroad. The association, concerned with local architecture, has so far mainly worked on the Provence region (south-east France). For this first escape in distant territory, we consider this workshop as a sharing between two very different cultures. So we want to work the architectural space, but also "danced" space: if people in France are mobilizing to reborn the old building cultures, in Jamaica much of the musical cultural heritage reborn with dancehall.

At the crossing between Hip-Hop, Jazz, Reggae and African dances, Dance Hall is a Jamaican contemporary dance, booming everywhere in the world today.

"The space of Jamaican dancehall is deeply multidimensional. This is due to the multiple meanings of the term dancehall, which indeed refers to both the physical space in which to hold the “dances” -literally the dance hall -, but it's also the sound space that occupies this physical space, which fills and gives it body. "

Romain Cruse, « Les territorialisations du dancehall jamaïcain. », EchoGéo. http://echogeo.revues.org/11737

The course of the workshop will incorporate a daily practice of dance with local professionals. The question of the appropriation of space that may arise through the prism of the existing one in the culture of "dancehall".

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Guest house in Eden District

The project located on the heights of Montegobay, second largest city and tourist capital is to build responsible eco lodges where the land will be cultivated organically, and the rooms will be built with natural materials.

Today most of the local architecture made of concrete, does not integrate with the natural environment even if earth architecture has evolved over the years with special techniques for earthquake resistance and conditions for hot humid climate.

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EARTH ARCHITECTURE WORKSHOP in JAMAICA

The publications