Quote:
Originally Posted by Joghurta
Not in my book, it isn't!
With the same kind of "argument" you could start building Bavarian farm houses in NM and claim "just let it sit there for a while and it'll be authentic".
What is authentic to NM is so obvious that I really fail to see why it has to be explained.
Adobe houses belong in NM, exactly because of what they are made of.
Earth & Dirt. NM kind of earth & dirt.
That means they put as little strain on the environment as necessary from the get go, and later on they also require less energy to cool them in the summer and less heat to warm then in the winter, because of their thick walls.
The flat rooftop also doubles as a veranda and can be used to ventilate the whole building (an A/C w/o AC).
East Coast style thin wall wood buildings don't belong to NM exactly because of the resource required to build them - wood.
Wood requires trees and trees are one of the scarcest resource in a desert state such as NM. Their thin walls and large glass windows also require a lot more energy to cool them during the summer and even more to warm then in the winter. And that kind of energy waste in turn contributes to global warming, which makes the whole desert calamity even worse in turn.
One of the main reasons that America has the absolute highest waste of Energy per person in the whole wide world is the refusal of transplants to live in harmony with their chosen environment.
Thus maybe East Coast style thin wall wood buildings don't belong in many parts of the Northern US either.
That's what makes Adobe and Pueblo style buildings "authentic" to NM.
Because the early settlers could not afford to be at war with Nature, they had no choice but to live in harmony with it and thus they choose a building style which strains the environment as little as possible, while having the highest energy & maintenance efficiency for a desert climate.
Why do you think that desert buildings all "look alike" in principle, from New to Old Mexico, from Algeria to Morocco, from Timbuktu to the Gobi desert?
Because the Native peoples of those regions all had to find efficient ways to build their homes, while putting as little strain on their environment as possible.
And if you found most Rez food "bland and ordinary", may I suggest you just didn't eat at the right places ...
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I think you're trying to draw some sort of purist line in the mud... ok by me, make your point. I didn't diss adobe...it's what I live in.
But as someone who occupies an adobe house with nice thick walls I understand the benefits, but also the drawbacks in the modern world. First among them is that adobe is more expensive than some other equally energy efficient building techniques, and it's economical use requires
lots of very cheap labor and a lot of time. I've been in adobes with too thin (12", say) walls, and though they are mud walls they're too thin to avoid the downside of adobe in a coldish winter climate..they're always chilly and require more heat to be comfortable. Walls over 18" (minimum) are far better, but a lot of the adobes built are not that thick. When they're not thick they're NOT efficient, and thick means more expensive.
Were we to be purists, we'd have to eschew adobe brick, I suppose, as the Spanish interlopers brought that innovation to New Mexico. True Pueblo buildings are stacked stone or heaped mud, not bricks, and the earliest of home structures are pit houses, half underground, that use lots of wood. Efficient if you don't have much for heat and like living in a hole, but they haven't caught on for a thousand years or so. Even the native cultures abandoned that efficient but unpleasant structure when stacked stone and later stacked bricks (gracias, Conquistadores!) came along.
Today, I'd not look to any Native American culture for guidance in this matter, as the trailer or doublewide seems to be the home of choice, probably for short term economic reasons.
While it's not often spoken of, adobe structures can be extremely dangerous in any kind of earthquake..they tend to want to return from whence they came when the earth shakes. While you're admiring mudbrick buildings in the Middle East and elsewhere, look at the death tolls when they have earthquakes. Immense and tragic.
In any case, I was speaking of appropriate in terms of historical propriety, but if wood buildings weren't efficient in some ways people wouldn't have been using them in NM for the last 150+ years. Wood is not hard to get (gracias, truckers) and is not expensive, so it's use is going to remain common, as much as that upsets you and your ideal vision. A new wood home with a high R value is as or more efficient than any adobe and can be built far faster.
In terms of style, which is pretty much what we had been talking about, territorial style can have adobe walls, but doesn't look like a pueblo structure and only sometimes has a flat roof. It just has the appearance and details that characterize taste and style that was carried, like the idea of mud bricks, to NM from somewhere else.
If I was building a house tomorrow I'd use something like perform-wall
Performwall Panel System which uses 80% recycled material, is
safe in an earthquake, almost fireproof, relatively soundproof (another advantage of adobe) and very energy efficient. Also cheaper than adobe and far faster to build. Time is money.
I'm open to suggestions about where to find tasty chow in Navajoland, as in 20+ years I've not found much to care about. Note:
any place I visit that has bland and ordinary food is the wrong place The cultural center at the Tigua rez. in El Paso used to do a kick-butt green posole with pork, but I don't think it's open anymore.
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Bolos are the bomb!
I grew up in Alaska and that's what my dad wore when he dressed up. Went great with his Alaskan tuxedo. 
