I in
the STORM Garden Rammed Earth Wall Project
Senior Visual Arts Students
Rick Hansen Secondary School
The Rammed Earth Project began as an innovative idea of the Arts Department
to bring culture, art, and community together. As a visiting artist under
the Arts in Education Program of the Ontario Arts Council I collaborated
with the senior art students and their teachers, Ms. Susan Elliott and
Mr. Robert Lompart to design and construct three rammed earth sculptures.
Rammed earth is an ancient form of earth architecture that originated
in the Middle East and involves ramming soil layer by layer inside a form
to create a rock-hard structure.
The students blended over 15 cubic yards of clay soil (obtained from
a nearby development) with sand, cement and pigment and hand tamped over
100 layers of soil. Individually, they cast a personalized artifact in
concrete relief and embedded it into the strata of one of the walls. In
effect, these walls will become an ‘archeological’ site sharing
student identity for future generations.
Community art is a very public process. Everyone watched as the walls
were built, and students experienced new relationships with one another,
the school population, the elementary school and the surrounding neighbours.
The value of teamwork and the role of art in bringing a community together
was felt and understood.
Senior
Visual Art Students’ Reflections On the Wall
Impressive is certainly a good word to describe our accomplishments.
The final product is impressive. The fact that we completed the project
at all is impressive. B
ut it is the way we performed the task that was
most impressive. The space that we have created became more and more special
as the project moved toward completion and after the final layer was tamped,
and the formwork had fallen, we knew we had participated in something
we could be proud of forever....read more.
The rammed earth walls will become a structural feature of a new garden
to be created on the site, the I of the STORM Garden. The walls were situated
with the narrow end pointing to each of three trees to create “spokes”
that would spiral around a center hub. We quickly realized that there
was a synchronicity between the philosophy of the school, S.T.O.R.M. –
Stewardship, Technology, Opportunity, Responsiveness, and Metacurriculum,
and the center or still point we had generated with the w
alls.  The
eye of a storm is calm and it was a natural step to link the concept of
STORM with our goal to create a peaceful place. The design for the I of
the STORM Garden creates a reflective place where anyone’s thoughts
can circle inward and recharge, before spiraling back out into the storm
of th eir daily lives.
Next year the school will be working with the community to realize the
landscape plan for the site.
Click here for
the Slide Show
You will need Microsoft Power Point to view the presentation.
Support for this project provided by:
Ontario Arts Council
Toemar Garden Supply
ABCO Construction Inc.
Rona Home & Garden Supply
2002 Rammed Earth Walls
Dimensions:
Walls: 5-6'H x 7'L x 30"W
Site: 75' x 45'
Materials:
Rammed Earth (soil, sand, pigment and cement), concrete
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