Cob: Re: Aizu Gig

[Carl Vilbrandt]

Darryl -  hello what mailing list or you on ?  Your answers are below. It
seems you are from Tokyo. We just had a Digital and Academic Freedom of
Information workshop in Akihabara in the Linux building and I could have
talked to you there. Answers are below

Darel Henman wrote:

> Carl,
>   your mail did not get through to a lot of people until recently.  Tell
> me what's going on in your Aizu now.

Well that is a broad general question.  You seem familiar with this area.
Do you know its history ?  I am an associated professor in the computer arts
lab of the university of Aizu.  The university of Aizu is a very specialized
computer university.

> How long have you been there.

I have been visiting Aizu for the last eight years and I am just finishing a
three-year contract that may be renewed. I study with a temple carpenter of
this region and have built computer models of several temples in this
region.

>
> Japanese mud walls were used since about 1,400 years ago.  Its mainly a
> wattle and daub type of painted / hand applied daub=cob.  However the
> Japanese process the mixture differently as far as I know than western
> cob.

 Of course I am aware of the use of mud walls in Japan. It seems that mud
store houses may have been used some 4000 years ago. They have uncovered
4000 year old rice fields in Aizu along with what appears to be  straw and
earth covered storage rooms..... a root cellar.

I have made arrangements to meet a "mud master builder".  I am also very
aware of its internal structure. The mud mixture makes use of the rice wine
mash.

>
>
> The use of earth plastered walls, due to its long required construction
> time lost out when concrete of good quality became cheaply available.
> Contractors could charge the same, but get done sooner with less cost.
> In other words they could make more money.

Concrete by itself has little of the qualities of mud walls and depending on
his accounting procedure you use ferro concrete is anything but cheap in its
environmental footprint. -  reference the rucksack accounting procedures

> The profession of mud
> earthen walls is realing and tryping to keep their art alive.

I'm interested in the not only keeping alive as it is by careful recordation
through computer modeling but promoting its use with advance computer
designed highbred structures.  Some saki factories have used modern mud
walls for heat sinks for their warehouses.

Ferro concrete is too expensive to use as a heat sink by anybody's
accounting system. Ninety percent of energy in the developed countries is
wasted on heating and cooling modern buildings. This in anybody's accounting
terms is unacceptable practice that is not in anyone's terms sustainable.
The integration of the use of earth in modern structures as a passive heat
sink is one of the few solutions to this problem.

I am developing systems that grow habitat similar to the building
technologies and cooling and heating controls that are used by ants. If you
might image an army of robot ants as maintenance and construction workers.
making use of reusable ferro concrete structural elements earth and recycled
garbage.

The area still has a lot of saki mesh for now and other natural materials.
The WTO is destroying the rice farming in the Aizu valley and sake mesh will
not be so available.   Rice farming has been done in this valley for 4000
years I give it 50 or less years and no one will be able to afford to.  I am
helping an organic rice farmer trying to find a way to fight this...

BTW I have been told It takes 70 years to complete a mud store house made
using the traditional construction methods.

> Darel Henman
> Tokyo

Humm soooo until later ..... here's to mud and rice wine .... Kom! Paeiiii
:-))