[Cob] Re: cob with buttresses

[Barbara Roemer and Glenn Miller]

Jonathan,

I'm troubled with your comments about Gaudi's choices.  I don't think we can
know what Gaudi would have done, faced with a building whose structure
required buttressing, whether flower-potted tops, in modifying so that they
were not quite so buttress-y, or even choosing somehow to be gauche.  It is
impossible to do any more than speculate, which is what Charmaine was doing.
Your riposte about buttresses being gauche seemed to be dismissive of
something Charmaine had enjoyed (as have millions of others) and found
aesthetically pleasing.  I can't quite make sense of your comment, apart
from it being negative, because gauche usually means tactless or socially
awkward, though in its original sense it probably meant turned away, as in
detoured.  Gaudi's work certainly turned away from mainstream architecture
of his time, so perhaps you are disputing the metaphorical sense.  In any
case, when you offer a negative opinion as your own, it's easier for list
members to take in than when you dismiss another's opinion with a statement
that sounds like fact.

For the list, if you'd like to see contemporary buttressing, look to the
recent LA Times 4 page article on the straw bale vault in Joshua Tree, or to
the vault Mikal Jacubal is building near Garberville, CA.  There are posts
referencing both on the Yahoo SB list.