This Modern Earthen Mansion Is A Design Marvel!

hello I'm David kin and today we're going to be touring La Casa de David Interfaith Temple and Retreat Center [Music] [Music] La Casa de David Interfaith Temple and Retreat Center has been a labor of love taking seven years to initially complete the home is and has been a reflection on my spiritual path at 24 years of age I stumbled Upon A man the likes of I had never previously encountered his name was Tara Singh an elderly man from Punjab India some years later I felt called upon to enroll in an Interfaith Seminary program the court teaching that was emphasized was that there is much more deeply in common between all the world's great face than that which divides all throughout the home are various elements and artifacts representing an array of cultures spiritual paths and belief systems the curvy linear Shake contour and soft lines of the home also mimic that of Mother Nature and the divine feminine regarding alternative construction and sustainable construction to be very precise as to what this home is actually made of it's actually a roundwood Timber framed straw bale and Cobb hybrid most of the house is slab on grade actually there is a couple areas that have a second story to it but the house is pretty much recting linear pretty long after the foundation was complete we were ready to actually start building some of the walls of the home the main area that we started on was a Cobb spine that ran through the lower wing of the house and I was lucky I had met through Word of Mouth a person on the west coast whose name was yonto Evans he's quite well known in the natural building World yanto sent one of his top students to come and work with me I was very fortunate he showed me the consistency of the Cobb that was a great help because I wouldn't have known what that was I'd never done I had not had any direct prior experience with Cobb I actually loved working with Cobb it's a mixture of sand clay uh strong water lends itself to a very high sculptural type of effect and niches and and shapes that you can put into your walls and it adds a lot of thermal mass as well so the thermal Mass holds heat energy it also connects to cool the room on the summer so this house primarily is a post and beam structure so everywhere that we see a visible rafter here there's a post that's supporting that directly underneath the straw I used here then is is referred to as infilm it's basically just insulation and it functions quite well as insulated speaking has a very high r value the walls are thick it also aesthetically provides for deep window sets um and a soft feel for the texture inside now that you've been briefly introduced to La Casa de David it's my pleasure to give you a tour what we have here is this is the East entrance of the house off the kitchen and this door is my Tribute to The esselen Institute in Big Sur California a place that's very dear to my heart I've been going there for 30 years and it's given me a lot of inspiration for what I want to do here come on in so here we have my proverbial mud room and the primary entrance through which I enter the house what we did here is we have sifted Clay walls um that were sifted very fine the clay was sifted very fine we have this Cobb bench here solid this was all done without a form using our hands and to the right I have the solid Cobb wall the frames the outer round table here we are entering the kitchen of the house one of the things that's unique about this is this island feature um it was something I came up with really just to maximize flow for the ceiling of the kitchen we use this tongue and groove material I basically did a modified herringbone fashion with that and then to hide the joints strictly cosmetically I found this larger diameter bamboo another focal point of the kitchen are these lentil posts they came from Pakistan they were hand carved and I like to think they most likely came out of a temple transitioning from the kitchen entering this dining room space in this corner I have a see-through fireplace with a uh a little bit of an oven above it here it really shows what you can do with Cobb because you can see a lot of sculpted areas making our way into the dining space this is actually one of two formal dining areas that we have in the house we'll see the other one here shortly and one of my favorite features of the house is this hammock and I wanted to provide a space where we could utilize this and let me come around this Clips here and uh I feel like I'm in the islands it's actually supported by two structural members that go the whole way up that support one of the main Ridges of the home this is the second of our other main formal dining areas it's just such a cozy space we have this round table I had a husband and wife woodworking team that made it for me in addition they made the front door in the garages yeah so these are all white pine uh with the bamboo in between and um so I designed the space so that uh this table can actually go down on the floor I put a scissor lift in here and it really opens up the space and uh I can use it several different ways prior to entering the great room just wanted to call attention to hear this is again a large Cobb wall actually it's the largest Cobb wall in the house you'll see it from the other perspective but it gives you an idea of the sculptibility of this material so here we are actually in the great room it's the really the the central room in the house and it's the room that gets used the most um one of the things that's obvious is this large wall here that spins around me it's the largest cob wall in the house it's enormous weight somewhere around 300 ton of material and uh you can see just a lot of the Cobb elements again showing the sculpt ability that's in here the other side of the sea see-through fireplace these niches also it's this room it's we have over 20 foot ceilings right around 20 foot ceilings um very dramatic fashion of the rafters in round and uh the south facing light that comes in the floor also is uh so it's a mosaic it really didn't start out that way I started out with an earth floor which I loved it was very soft but uh the floor really just got damaged and chipped up and so I had this rug in place and uh wanted to come up with another way to mask it and um so we ended up tiling a great friend of mine who was from Bulgaria he's a third generation iconographer did this mural and it came out very dramatic very beautiful it's gold leafed the deity itself is Manchester he's the booty Sapphire of wisdom he's a Tibetan deity so actually right now I'm heading up into the Loft the space over the dining room and um again it's another area that I love in the house here we are in the loft um space that what I really had in mind was something like a Moroccan Lounge and very cozy up here it's another place that I love to spend time in my libraries here um the roofs around it which is the kitchen room and out over the foyer entranceway is sedums and succulents so they're desert Species part of the green roof and um they'll recede in the winter and then come back every spring so it's really dramatic as they come back from this vantage point the structural elements of the house are quite visible here and actually very dramatic so I'm just now entering the space of the the foyer the front door it's the formal entrance of the home and I have a couple elements here that I can direct your attention to one being this Temple quality piece of Lakshmi and so she greets my guests and uh I really feel her presence another element that I had is Ganesha which can either place obstacles or remove obstacles in one's path another element in this space it was actually the last element to be built of the house is this red tail hawk so I'm a hang gliding pilot and so one of my total animals is the red tail hawk upstairs on the second floor we have the master suite and the Heart of the house the meditation room this space was designed with the intention that I wanted a low ceiling here and actually a low doorway so that one um it was almost made to bow to enter and then as soon as they enter is this expansive opening and in here it is the heart of the house it's my Sacred Space um I like the idea of imbuing a space and setting aside a space with what what brings us joy what brings us upliftment this is an earth floor um and it's a cob structure and it's two and a half stories of Cobb uh vertical and so it's enormous weight enormous Mass and uh yeah it just creates that grounding and that centerness of this room directly across from the meditation room is the master suite and this is the entrance to the master suite here we're formally entering into the master bedroom space various elements that have been Incorporated is the curvature of the Bale walls the high ceilings and round timber frame logs and the flowing arches here here we are in the master bath and various elements here again the arched opening the expansive walk-in shower lots of stone that I've Incorporated throughout transitioning into the lower wing three of the four bedrooms in the home are in this area to my right here through this door frame is what I refer to as the round room the meditation is room is directly above this is the lower wing of the house I refer to it as this is the rec room we have a key the fireplace here and this wall actually was the first wall built when we started building it's the full bath downstairs that my guests actually share there's a jacuzzi tub behind here with a shower in it here we are in the Lakota room it's called the Lakota room because my youngest son is named Lakota and at one point he was in this room it features these are bail walls behind me and this is an earth wall again one of the first walls that was made that divides this room from the sunset room which is almost a mirror image of this it's been 16 years since I've moved in here and since we finished I love the space I love the creation here and the artistic expression it's brought to me a lot of really neat people through the construction process and and since and the house has been really well received and it's something I'm proud of I'm proud of not just myself but all those that had a big part in making it happen if you'd like more information on La Casa de David you can find it on my website which is spirit-rider.com that's Spirit hyphen rider.com in addition I'm available through Airbnb out of Wrightsville Pennsylvania [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Natural Buildings

Views: 33,138

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Id: GAJTIbaC1vs

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022