Thursday, September 6, 2007

>Ceramic:Full Scale Dwelling





“Now the time has come to create a new scale in the ceramic world, to walk out from the womb of a pot to the space of a room.”-Nader Khalili
Using traditional Islamic glazing and firing as a departure point, Nader and his collegues sought to create a full scale ceramic architecture. From the cultural use of ceramic tiles for flooring and wall material, ceramic for wash basins and water closets Nader actually created an entire system that contained many of these systems built into the ceramic architectural form.
From the conception of the full scale ceramic house came the execution. After learning from local (Iranian) artisans, Nader perfected the glazing strategy to be used-even using the pesticide sprayers ubiquitous to the farming region for the glaze spray guns. After glazing, then the entire structure was used as a kiln, firing itself. On one occasion Nader used a single firing, a process to set the glaze and ceramic. But, the most effective results were obtained in the usual two fire system. the first firing known as the bisque, lasted for 24 hours. The second firing to set the glaze lasted for 12 hours.
While somewhat limited, Nader's experiment raises excellent notions of scale and the use of traditional techniques in earth architecture.




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