Sometimes doing nothing brings about things that the greatest undertakings cannot achieve. Sometimes not-building can give rise to a space whose feeling and atmosphere no construction could ever produce. To subtract from what exists becomes to add to what does not. Something barely visible, merely the relation between spaces that find meaning along its course. A passage that sets the mind in motion so that one may discover life within it. A completing emptiness that holds within itself interior and exterior, movement and stillness, and whose presence grants an awareness of the surrounding world.
Cozy corners and compositions of light and shadow bring into being intoxicating micro-worlds in unity with the whole of the building — the product of not-building. A space in which being present means oscillating between inside and outside.
Yet a house is a vessel that must come into being so that its contents may attain the desirable comfort that is the product of cohabitation with climate and culture, and in its coexistence with others of its kind give rise to the concept of neighborhood. The alley is the concept that renders meaningful the interaction among these coexistences. A house, if it is truly a house, can establish a point of connection between the urban lifestyle within and the charm of the village without.
With the passage of time and humanity's ever-growing drive toward progress and modernity, a flood of migration was set in motion. Migration from houses that had been shaped to suit the human condition, toward cities full of stacked and ostentatious cubes. But in this world nothing can contend with human nature except death. Human nature craves the stillness and tranquility that urban life has unjustly stolen. So people chose the reverse path of migration, to drag their unfulfilled urban dreams to the village — oblivious that they were carrying the clamor entrenched in their being into the heart of the village's straw and clay, and by heaping piles of stone, disrupting the symphony of earth.
Khaki House took shape in this way. It was never meant to be a villa. Its mission was to become a house that simultaneously possessed the comfort of urban living and the simplicity of a rural countenance. A newcomer that quickly finds its place in the heart of the village and, in pursuit of a different way of living, at every step invites its inhabitants into a fresh world.
The alley became the house. A serpent gliding languidly through the bamboo reeds — sometimes stretching its neck, then falling asleep again — fashioning a world of dancing light and reed stalks so that between every sliver of light a new world might arise. In one place the play of light and shadow, of dark and bright, builds the space and enters into conversation with the sun; and in another it finds an aperture through which to draw water inside and frame the sunset.
Earth is in harmony with nature; it is everywhere; it interacts with cold and heat — thus the finest choice for cladding a desert-edge building. At night it stores the moisture needed to produce the coolness of day. It is durable, fire-resistant, secure, and intimate — holding sound within itself.
In building the house, first a place for water was established, and the house emerged from the tamping of earth excavated from the ground. The accumulated soil was graded, processed, poured layer by layer into large wooden formwork, and pounded and compressed by hand and mallet. Each day a section of wall was built, then the formwork was removed to let the wall breathe and the mortar dry. This construction was a rare experience, realized under the shadow of knowledge gained from locals who had spent years in the company of earth and were familiar with its temperament and defiance.
This house, with its earthy bearing and that same humility blended with pride, with low energy consumption and modest cost, gradually took form — to stand firmly in its place, to endure for years in the bosom of its homeland, and ultimately, without polluting the environment, to rest peacefully in the embrace of nature.