Puntaje de medias por categoría de valores

opposite, top: The teaching wing of the C. D. Blake Theatre Complex is defined by galvanized metal water tanks, solar collector panels, and rammed earth.

opposite, bottom: Technologies replace architectural motifs: a solar collector panel articulates the entrance to the auditorium.

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walls and roofs, which are also clad with cor-rugated steel to reflect the sun’s rays. Thermal chimneys that punctuate the roofline help keep temperatures comfortable by drawing hot air out of the building. Large eaves and sun shading devices are also common features;

they protect the buildings from the high angle of the summer sun while allowing for the penetration of low winter sun.

The first building constructed using these principles was a student pavilion, completed in 1996. In addition to demonstrating the ideals set forth by the campus staff, it laid the groundwork for the series of ambitious build-ings that was to come next. Next built was the School of Environmental and Information Sciences. With two stories and 31,958 square feet of space, it accommodates one hundred

staff members and postgraduate students, a Mapping and Teaching Room, an Information Technology Hub, and a Herbarium, which contains living examples of regional fauna.

Because of the use of alternative materials, the cost of the building is estimated to be between 4 and 14 percent less than a conventional structure of this type.

The C. D. Blake Theatre Complex was completed next. Its program includes a two-story teaching complex that contains two thirty-seat tutorial rooms and two theaters—

one that accommodates one hundred occupants and a larger two-hundred-seat lecture theater that has an earth-covered roof to help maintain the thermal quality of the space. The expanding university’s next project was a series of rammed earth student

cottages named the Rothwells. Between 2000 and 2002, six buildings accommodating forty-six beds with laundry facilities were constructed; and in 2003, another rammed earth building, the Student Association, the center for students living and working on the campus, was completed.

Plans for additional buildings follow- ing the ecological concepts set forth by the campus’s first buildings are ongoing, and the projects have had an influence that has extended beyond its grounds. The success of Thurgoona has also prompted other local groups, including a church and a local college, to construct their new buildings in rammed earth.

right: Clerestory windows admit light into the auditorium foyer.

left: Thermal chimneys, which draw out rising hot air, punctuate the roofline of the School of Environmental and Information Sciences.

43 Corrugated metal sun-shading devices

around the windows protect the interior from the high angle of the summer sun but allow the low winter sun to penetrate.

ARCHITECTURE FIRM

In 1985 the Church of Reconciliation was destroyed by German Democratic Republic (GDR) border troops. The historic neo-Gothic Evangelical brick church, consecrated on August 28, 1894, had an unfortunate location.

With the swift construction of the Berlin wall in 1961, the church, located in the prohibited no-man’s-land between East and West Berlin, was closed off from the city literally overnight.

Caught within this zone, the building remained inaccessible to anyone for more than twenty years. Because of its awkward position in what was called the “death strip,” the build-ing created a problem for the GDR, who patrolled the wall to prevent any crossing to the west: the long detour around the church made patrol routes difficult, and the steeple was an obstruction to their line of fire.

Subsequently, in January 1985 the GDR razed the nave and steeple using explosives.

The images of the destruction were televised internationally.

Less than five years after the destruction of the church, the Berlin wall was removed, uniting Germany once again. The grounds of the former church, then marked by tall grass, two concrete patrol paths, and the remains of the church foundation, were given back to the community, and the congregation quickly began to consider what should be done with the property. While many wanted to erase the history of the city’s division as soon as possible, the community instead conceived of a plan for a new chapel to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth, two young Berlin architects, were offered the commission to design the new Chapel of Reconciliation on the site of the previous church. Their initial proposal called for con-crete and glass, but the community considered these materials representative of the oppres-sive wall that had divided their cities and

alternatively selected wood and clay to construct the building—significant because a historic clay mine once existed adjacent to the church property. The chapel was the first load-bearing earthen religious building in Germany and the first public rammed earth structure there in 150 years. The clay used to construct the walls was brought from the nearby town of Herzfelde, on the outskirts of Berlin, and mixed with the ground remains of the demol-ished church. Crushed brick, tile, and nails, all remnants of the previous church, are embed-ded in the walls and visible on their surface, preserving the tumultuous history of the site.

The heart of this small, oval building is an ovoid room constructed of rammed earth, enclosing the worship space. While the shape of the space designates the traditional east-west axis of Christian churches by aligning the entrance of the room to the altar, a secondary axis is created by an alcove where the recovered altar section of the previous church is stored.

It marks the center of the preexisting nave and faces the direction of the original aisle and entrance. The new rammed earth altar, which