Look again at the earth as a base construction material, taking advantage of technology. It is the concern of the architect Maite Sainz de la Maza Benet, one of the twelve women who form the core of the Lleida land of transformative women project, with which the Government Delegation intends to promote a shared agenda of working rural women ” to overcome agropatriarchy, break with double discrimination due to the fact of being village women and make rural women visible beyond the primary sector.
“Building with earth is something that had been done a lot in the past, especially here in the Lleida area, where there are many dry stone cabins. Over the years it has fallen into oblivion, among other reasons because the regulations are strict and there was no standardized material,” says the architect. She also says that it is an architecture labeled as poor: “The poor built with the earth, which is the only thing they had, while the rich used other materials such as stone or brick.”
He has dedicated himself to standardizing earth material in recent years with his geologist engineer partner Macari de Torres. They design natural materials, a work with which they have won awards such as the Terra Ibérica in the Innovation category for their research project Alive Earthblock. It is a prefabricated raw earth block with controlled erosion for the restoration of earth-built heritage. He does it from his studio for which he has chosen a name that is quite a declaration of intentions.
These are materials that De la Maza Benet considers “interesting for the environment” because they do not require cooking and do not generate waste. “It means – he explains – that tomorrow, when the building ends its useful life, it can be thrown into sleep and can be directly incorporated into the environment again, returning to the earth without the need to manage.”
It defends health benefits, “because it is a material that breathes and is very acoustic insulating.” He argues that this is where the concept “deafer than a wall” comes from and also talks about its capacity for thermal inertia, which allows energy to accumulate and let it go little by little. And he gives an example: “It’s that feeling you get when you enter old town houses. In the middle of summer, it is horribly hot outside and inside it is very cool without the need for air conditioning, which means that in the end this also has a benefit because it minimizes the energy cost of the building itself.”
She lives in a house built with earthen material in Els Alamus, a town where she also has her studio. To manufacture, she looks for industrial partners and land close to the factory, as close as possible to the construction site. “We can use any soil anywhere, all but organic. The first layer, the one used for cultivation, is the one we don’t want, we go a little further down.
His commitment to recover heritage with earth materials looking to the past began to work when the economy was weaker. In the economic crisis of 2008, with lower budgets, there were more clients who wanted to rehabilitate rather than tear down the building. Economically it was more worthwhile for them. Homes in Barcelona, ??Alicante or Mallorca, earth walls, shops in Santander or the renovation of the Ivars d’Urgell Town Hall are some of his projects.
For her, participating in Lleida, land of transformative women, allows her to reclaim the earthen architectural heritage of Lleida, “giving tools to build as our ancestors did, taking advantage of new technologies and leaving a more sustainable architecture.”
“Sometimes when you are in a world like that, like a rural one, a little isolated from the things that happen, you feel alone. Finding other women who are also doing other interesting projects is like a shot of energy.” He sees “incredible potential” in the group. “They are – he assures – people who are doing very interesting things and who sometimes open your eyes to see other things or see things in another way.”
“I believe,” he concludes, “that this group has given me the energy and strength of knowing that we can transform the rural world with deep-rooted projects.”
