Built of Earth: The Casona and Vernacular Earthen Architecture in Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

This article discusses Built of Earth, an artistic research project by the author in collaboration with Mexico City-based architect Octavio Castro Gallardo. The work-in-progress—an experimental documentary project consisting of a short film, a publication, and a site-specific installation—explores the restoration of Castro Gallardo’s 200-year-old adobe family home in the town of Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, that was damaged by an earthquake that shook the Pacific coast in February 2018. This article situates the restoration of the Casona within the discourses of vernacular earthen architecture and performance studies, describing how, in addition to being the site of various cultural performances, the Casona itself performs cultural memory. Heyn-Jones discusses the relationships—among humans, more-than-humans, and other actants—that permeate and haunt the adobe walls of this spectacular ruin. Heyn-Jones’s essay offers a provisional discussion of local seismic cultures, aspects of architectural material culture that reactively or preventively resist earthquake damage, and the way these manifest in the Casona. In contrast to the centuries-old adobe Casona are the concrete-block dwellings that surround it and that are ubiquitous across Mexico. This article situates this vernacular within the discourse of the ‘remittance house’ and discusses the materialities and temporalities of these ‘dream houses’ in the context of the Casona. Finally, this article offers some thoughts on architectural animism and how it might manifest in the Casona, this singular dwelling, built of earth.