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Stabilized
Insulated
Rammed
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20 Years at SIREWALL
SIREWALL is now in its twentieth year as the inventors and builders of insulated rammed earth. Looking back, it seems that the company was ahead of its time. Take a look at this video featuring SIREWALL Founder Meror Krayenhoff, as he reflects on his company’s history and the current imperative for green building.
Meror Krayenhoff, Inventor and Founder of SIREWALL Inc.
Get to Know SIREWALL
Now in its 20th year as innovative green builders, SIREWALL Inc. is pleased to exhibit at BUILDEX Vancouver and the BC Home + Garden Show to present its patented insulated rammed earth system at these popular British Columbia-based shows. Not only has SIREWALL been prominently featured in the new VanDusen Botanical Gardens Visitors Centre in Vancouver and the Nk’ Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, SIREWALL also has been designed into numerous award-winningresidential projects. At BUILDEX and the BC Home + Garden Show, expert SIREWALL Project Managers will be pleased to meet with show participants to talk about their unique SIREWALL System and twenty-year history building across British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest and around the globe.
February 8 and 9, 2012: Buildex Vancouver, Booth #418
BUILDEX is Western Canada’s largest annual tradeshow and conference for designing, building and managing real estate. Buildex features over 600 exhibits and more than 50 educational seminars in design and architecture, property management, construction and renovation. Check out SIREWALL at booth 418, talk to us about insulated rammed earth for your next residential or commercial project. Use discount code BXV12 for FREE Tradeshow access ($25 value)!
February 22 – 26, 2012: BC Home + Garden Show, Booth #805
Refresh,Renew, and Restore at the BC Home + Garden Show! Over 425 experts, including SIREWALL will be on hand February 22 to 26 to help with your design, renovation, and landscaping dilemmas. Talk to us about building your dream home with beautiful, durable, efficient, healthy SIREWALLS.
The Possibility of Good
Sam Rodell, Principal, Kirkwood Rodell Architects, President Earthwall
“…to “be less bad” is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the “be less bad” approach: a failure of the imagination. From our perspective, this is a depressing vision of our species’ role in the world. What about an entirely different model? What would it mean to be 100% good?” – McDonough & Braungart, Cradle to Cradle
I have always designed and built with what I have considered to be strong considerations for environmental issues. Yet throughout the entire course of my career, I have, from an environmental perspective, never created anything that did not fall somewhere between Bad and Less Bad. As architect Alan Shope has so tersely confessed, “I have been complicit in architectural crimes.” We all – each and every one of us – are living somewhere between bad and less bad every day.
In writing Cradle to Cradle, McDonough and Braungart join a chorus of voices the likes of Thoreau, Leopold, Carlson, McHarg, Suzuki, Berry, Pollan, and others who not only point to our collective environmental missteps, but also offer positive inspiring and empowering alternatives toward corrective action. It seems to me that McDonough and Braungart are precisely correct when they speak of a failure of imagination.
…One of the primary obstacles to meaningful change is how we currently evaluate choices with respect to cost, or more specifically, how we define cost. Almost without exception, we consider the cost of something to be what we pay to initially acquire it. … The impact on our health from cheap but toxic building materials is a prime example; what are the ultimate costs of living and working in environments loaded with carcinogens?
Read more… and learn more about determining what’s important and deciding on what matters in the built environment.
Scaling up to meet demand
SIREWALL Founder Meror Krayenhoff and SIREWALL Project Manager & Master Earth Mason Jerry Fitzpatrick have been in Delhi, India working on a challenging commercial project, the Lalit Hotel. india-based architect Ashwin Alva contacted SIREWALL Licensee Terra Firma Builders as a result of the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre first place finish at the World Architectural Festival (2008).
Scaling up for the project, a volumetric mixer has been acquired to meet the demands of the project build-out. The team is in the midst of construction and is overseeing a team of local labourers to complete this, the biggest-ever SIREWALL project.
Introduction to Insulated Rammed Earth Course
SIREWALL System inventor Meror Krayenhoff hosts a transformational Introduction to Insulated Rammed Earth Course. In 2012, SIREWALL courses will be offered in Vancouver and on Salt Spring Island, BC. Over two days, create your new vision for a dream home and experience:
- The comfort of rammed earth when touring SIREWALL homes on Salt Spring Island
- Types of soil required to analyze and choose the optimal blends
- Exploring aspects of design and engineering
- Building your own rammed earth sample
- A range of possibilities, digging into ‘deep green’ conversations.
The SIREWALL team has introduced the SIREWALL System for rammed earth construction to thousands of professionals and enthusiasts.
Vancouver 2012 Course Dates:
Feb 11, 12
May 5, 6
Salt Spring Island 2012 Course Dates:
Apr 28, 29
Jun 30, Jul 1
Jul 7, 8
Sep 8, 9
Sign up today. Space is limited: Sirewall.com/courses
SIREWALL In the News
rchitecture News- This short film was recently released on the company’s website and highlights some of the shocking statistics that are borne from modern construction techniques with a focus on the residential sector.
Inhabitat’s Architecture blog features a SIREWALL Photo Gallery, along with a link to…”a fascinating video produced by SIREWALL that depicts the environmental impact ofbuilding an ordinary home”.Read more: Stabilized Insulated Rammed Earth Walls Last a Lifetime Without Maintenance
Green Prophet - “Most people agree that having shelter is one of the most fundamental human needs, but for more privileged communities around the globe, abasic necessity has evolved into one of the most destructive industries on earth.”Read More: Why We Need an Earth Architecture Revolution