In conjunction with the upcoming AdobeUSA 2009 earthbuilding conference in mid-May 2009, NNMC’S Adobe Construction department is proud to announce a series of pre-conference adobe workshops which will run from Monday to Thursday before the conference officially opens on Friday, May 15th. This will be a great opportunity for anyone wanting to get to know the department better before making the decision to begin the 2-semester adobe certificate program. Full details about the workshops and the AdobeUSA 2009 conference can be found here:

http://www.adobeasw.com/adobeusa-2009-workshops

In October, Quentin Wilson and Kurt Gardella will be attending this year’s LEHM2008 earthbuilding conference in Koblenz, Germany. Quentin will be presenting a paper on adobe brickmaking practices in New Mexico and Kurt will be organizing a poster session on the adobe construction program at Northern New Mexico College including a hands-on demonstration of one of his online adobe classes. The conference attracts speakers and participants from around the world and promotes the use of earthbuilding worldwide. For more information on the conference please visit:

http://www.dachverband-lehm.de/lehm2008/index_en.html#

Quentin Wilson, our department chair, recently shared his thoughts on the power of adobe in a video interview for New Mexico Ecopedia. Choose the “Adobe Power” film clip from the top menu to see the clip. The other clips are also worth viewing.

Link: New Mexico Ecopedia

We have finally found the time to add some images to our department photo gallery to give you a better idea of how “hands-on” most of the instruction is. Northern New Mexico is full of ongoing adobe projects and our classes participate in as many of those projects as possible. Check the gallery often as we continue to add pictures and descriptions and categorize it for you.

To give you a taste of how adobe instruction can be taught through the internet, Kurt Gardella has made one of his “Horno Design and Construction” course videos available on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR1aniPtP5Y

The video is step 6 in the process of building an horno and deals with adding insulation layers to the dome of the horno. The latest horno class depended entirely on weekly video demonstrations for content and stundent feedback was the most positive so far. We will continue to offer students in countries with limited bandwidth step-by-step text and still image instructions, but video is clearly the best way to demonstrate adobe construction via the internet. Register for the class in the summer or fall to have complete access to all of the videos!