Acoma Architecture Education Portal

Sky City Cultural Center and the Architecture of Acoma Pueblo Chapters Sky City Cultural Center Acoma’s Cultural Landscape Village Evolution Traditions of Design + Construction Six Essential Building Materials Essential Building Forms A Holistic Approach to Sustainability Haaku’s Sustainable Roots in Chaco Canyon Videos Teacher’s Guide Sky City Cultural Center Where Opportunity Arose from Tragedy When their old visitor center burned down in 2000, the people of New Mexico’s Acoma Pueblo saw an opportunity. They challenged themselves to design a replacement that was as welcoming to visitors as it was to their own community. The center would tell the story of their people, and it would bridge historic and modern ideas about culture and sustainability. Their success speaks for itself. Explore the design of the Cultural Center in the video Emergence: Acoma Sky City Cultural Center. Then go deeper, as Prudy Correa and Marilyn Ray share what it was like to learn pottery from their grandparents and how they pass on the tradition today. They invite us to consider the tools and techniques of their ancient craft, from the special water-holding qualities of Acoma clay to the pigments made from local stone. Discover how the Cultural Center incorporates pottery as a means of storytelling, and how this connects to the tradition of sharing folk tales. Architect Barbara Felix and former Center Directors Brian Vallo and Emerson Vallo talk about the aspects of design incorporated. They then share how six essential building elements are used to weave together the old and the new in the modern structure. Ancient design in a modern Cultural Center Stone, wood, mica, corn, mud and pottery: they are the six building elements of Acoma Sky City. This website explores how these elements have been layered with architectural forms and details from ancestral homelands at Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins, Mesa Verde and the Moss Ruins. We will study the Acoma people’s relationship to earth, wind, water and the stars, and their ties to the landscape and the sacred mountains and sites in the four directions. We delve into what happens when a cultural fabric of honoring deep traditions comes up against a need to address contemporary ideas of sustainability. We learn how modern building needs can be supported by the same methods of passive solar design that have been used in Acoma for more than 600 years and precursor sites for nearly a millennium. Finally, we take a tour of the ancient and modern adaptations of the ideas and systems that make up the extraordinary structure that is the Sky City Cultural Center – recently named the Southwest’s Best Cultural Attraction as well as a Building of the Past 50 Years that has Built a Community. This building, like the Acoma people, will leave its mark on us. ********** Acoma’s Cultural Landscape The Pueblo of Acoma, or Haak’u, as it is called by the people that live there, is located approximately 75 miles southwest of Albuquerque. The historic village, also known as Sky City, is perched atop a 225 foot tall sandstone mesa at nearly 7,000 feet elevation. The Pueblo – a Spanish word for village that now defines the land holdings of some Native American communities in the southwest – is a cultural landscape: it is a historic site where the buildings and the landscape are inter-related. Everything we see reflects the Acoma people’s traditions, customs, beliefs and values. Acoma’s cultural landscape includes the historic village on the mesa, the farming fields below, the modern villages nearby, the Sky City Cultural Center, many historic sites and nature – the mesas, water sources, plants, trees and mountains both within and beyond the valley in which they live – all of which are sacred to the people of Acoma. Acoma traces its history back more than 800 years just on this site. Before they came to Sky City, Acoma’s people migrated through Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins and Canyon de Chelly. These ancient peoples, which included both farmers and hunter-gatherers, built extraordinary civilizations, but traditional means of food collecting and production could not sustain the large communities the villages had become. A severe drought in the 1100s-1200s forced many people to move Southeast towards the Rio Grande Basin to become what we now know as the Puebloan communities, and those that went southwest to western New Mexico and eastern Arizona became known as the Western Puebloans, including Acoma, its neighbor and cousin village Laguna, and Hopi and Zuni. These new communities were smaller, and rebuilt in areas with more humid climates and more forgiving ecosystems. The Acoma people speak the western dialect of the Keres language, which they share with Laguna. Like Laguna, they are considered “Western Puebloans,” which in several significant ways – most especially in their architecture – more closely resemble Hopi and Zuni than the Rio Grande Pueblos. The story of their departure from points north and arrival at what is now Acoma is kept alive through a rich tradition of oral storytelling. It takes several days to tell. One of Acoma’s guardian spirits, called Salt Woman, told her people that she would travel counter-clockwise around the earth, circling inward towards its center. Her children were to tell their children, and their children’s children, to meet her at Haak’u, the center of the world, “the place that was prepared” for them. The four directions – north, south, east, and west – are important in Acoma culture and architecture, as are two other directions: the zenith (toward the heavens) and nadir (toward the center of the earth). Each direction, represented by a color, connects to one of their guardian spirits. A sacred mountain sits in each of these directions as well. At Acoma, the most important mountain is Mount Taylor – they call it Kaweshtima – to the north. It is an 11,000-foot-tall extinct volcano representing their origins and their migration to this place. Acoma’s physical landscape is centered on a large valley with many smaller mesas, hills and valleys within. From this landscape, the people harvest some woods for building, plants for building and medicine, and pottery clay. They seek out many colors of earth for tinting slips and earth plasters, plus clay and sand for adobe, obsidian for various tools, sandstone and lava rock. ********** Village Evolution Acoma was first documented in European historic records in 1539 by the Coronado expedition, followed by several other emissaries from Spain, until the village was visited finally by Juan de Oñate in 1598. At the time, the only way onto the mesa was to climb a large crevice in the rock with hand- and toe-holds carved into the rock. Early Spanish period reports indicated that the village of Ha-cu-que, Ah-co, Ako, or Acoma was constructed of 200 houses. The original village on this site was stacked a little like blocks, forming a D-shape several layers tall. Other ancient cities in the Southwest, such as Taos Pueblo and the ruins at Chaco Canyon and Bandelier National Monuments, have a similar structure. The Acoma people found out that Oñate had a plan to colonize their homeland, to take their food and force their people into slavery as he had done at other pueblos. Acoma decided to fight, and in 1598, residents fought and killed a group of soldiers coming to take their freedom. This had terrible consequences two months later, in January 1599, when Spanish soldiers returned to avenge the attack, and they brought many more soldiers and cannons. They attacked the elevated city, and the battle lasted three days. Hundreds of the Acoma people were killed and their entire village was destroyed. As Acoma was very remote, what we know about its rebuilding mostly comes from writings from visitors to the Spanish mission that was established many years after Acoma stood up for themselves. It was in the late 19th century and early 20th century when New Mexico became and American territory and then state, and when the railroads were built and brought all kinds of new people and technologies to New Mexico, that we start seeing the first visual insights into Acoma and other Southwest villages through drawings, photography, articles, and books. In 1877, photographer William Henry Jackson, who helped establish Yellowstone National Park, came to Acoma and documented the village. He built models of Acoma, Taos, Mesa Verde and Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon to showcase the West at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. This moment marked the beginning of the most significant change to Acoma’s future from outside forces. It was the moment Acoma became a tourist destination. Acoma became even more of an intriguing destination when photographer and journalist Charles Lummis published the stories of his travels with Adolph Bandelier to Acoma and many other Pueblo sites just a few years later. His description of an Acoma home is charming: “The dark store-rooms of their curious houses are never empty; and in the living-rooms hang queer tasajos (twists) of dried muskmelon for dwarf pies, bags of dried peaches for the same end, jerked mutton from their own flocks, jerked venison from the communal hunt, parched chile, and other staples. In a corner is always the row of sloping lava slabs, neatly boxed about, whereon blue corn is rubbed to meal with a smaller slab. Along the walls hang buckskins and Moqui [Hopi]-woven mantas, cougar-skin bow cases beside the Winchester, coral necklaces and solid silver necklaces, the work of their own clever smiths, and many other aboriginal treasures. The cleanly and comfortable wool mattresses are rolled and laid on benches with handsome and often costly Navajo blankets, for a daytime sofa. By night they are unrolled upon rugs or canvasses on the floor. In one corner is the wee but effective adobe fireplace, with chimney generally of unbottomed earthen jars, and in another row of handsome tinajas, painted in strange patterns, full of fresh water.” But even as Acoma was becoming of greater interest to the outside world, its traditions were being undermined. In the 1920s and 1930s, the young people of the Pueblo were sent to Indian Schools, where they were not allowed to speak their own language or learn their own ways. This resulted in a loss of cultural building knowledge, at the same time that the Keres language was nearly lost, and the knowledge of Acoma traditional weaving was totally lost. The Americans also started importing new materials and technologies into traditional New Mexican earth architecture around this time. These new materials, like metal windows and roofs, glass windows and cement stucco, were supposed to be easier to install and maintain, but these ultra-strong modern materials and their soft earthen counterparts in the historic pueblo don’t always work well together. And, the people… that maintained and kept the buildings “alive”… seemed to be forgotten in architecture. In 1965, renowned architectural historian Bainbridge Bunting described Acoma’s historic village as “the most important example of town planning and architectural achievement among the Western Pueblo Indians.” Acoma is indeed extremely special, as it is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States! A Different Way of Seeing Preservation Santa Clara Pueblo member Rina Swentzell was an expert on Puebloan architecture. She spent her life re-weaving the story of the people back into the way we look at Puebloan architecture. She argued that buildings are like living beings, and that they change over time, just as people do, as families do, and as our communities do. She recognized and taught about the interconnection between the people and the buildings. In her essay Pueblo Structures and Worldview, Rina wrote about how the children in the Pueblos would often lick the walls of the buildings to taste where they came from, as the adobe would taste different based on the source of the clay. One of her favorite tasting homes developed a crack that she watched get worse over many weeks and months, and when she asked her mother why nothing was being done, her mother replied, “That house has had a good life. It has been fed blessed and healed… it is now time for it to go back into the earth.” The life force, what her people call the po-wa-ha, that exists in humans, animals, and plants, is also contained in buildings. Sometimes, in traditional cultures, buildings are allowed to die. ********** Traditions of Design + Construction An archaeologist named Reynold J. Ruppé, Jr. conducted digs at parts of the ruins of the Spanish-destroyed village in the 20th century. His team unearthed the older village’s walls, and discovered they were made of long pieces of sandstone and covered with an earth plaster of red and white pigments from the area’s landscape. Later walls from the dig site were a combination of adobe and sandstone. The community was built in blocks of houses which ran from east to west, and each house was between one and five rooms deep. Like the older village ruins, the oldest sections of the current village, which started being built in 1646, consists of one-, two-, and three-story houses that run from east to west. But in the newer village, the rows of houses were arranged in 3 lines, and each block of homes was oriented slightly to the southeast. This method of laying out the homes is an important element of controlling the sun… it allows us to keep the sun out in summer when it is hot and to catch the sun early in the morning in winter when it is cold. The houseblocks are broken into sections by a ceremonial plaza as well as small pathways or “slots” which mimic similar gaps in the sandstone landscape around the village. The alignment of the streets to the east and west frames views to sacred sites and mountains in those directions, and also allows the observation of celestial alignments of stars, star clusters, and planets that coordinate with seasonal festivals, planting times, and ceremonies. Acoma buildings from the Acoma Archives at Center for Southwest Research, UNM 1890 Ben Wittick, NM History Museum, Palace of the Governors Photo Archive The homes are stacked like a wedding cake, with the tallest side to the north. The terraces naturally collect heat from the sun in the south and block the wind from the north in the winter. Some experts believe that the south-facing structures are related to those built by Acoma’s ancestors at Mesa Verde. The bottom level of the home is usually built of stone, and the second and third floors are built of adobe. The 2-foot-deep dirt roof and ceiling are held up with round wooden vigas (roof beams) and wooden planks or latillas (branches). The dirt and clay used for adobes in the 1640s village was harvested from right around the mesa, as well as from middens, an archaeological term for “waste piles,” located around the site. The use of midden soil for adobes was likely pioneered by the first priest of Acoma’s Mission San Esteban del Rey, Fray Juan Ramirez. Because of the use of midden soil, the adobes might include bones, charcoal, potsherds, or yucca… all things we would find in a midden, and so the building blocks themselves are something of a miniature archaeological site. Newer buildings are also commonly constructed of salvaged adobe, potsherds, and stone from older buildings. Rebuilding using local and available materials is how Acoma has remained sustainable over many hundreds of years. Before the roads were built just a few decades ago, the materials used to construct the village were carried up the cliffs in hand-made baskets or buffalo-hide bags carried like a backpack. Men would build the foundation and walls of the home, and installed the vigas and roofs. Women did the plastering, flooring, built the chimneys, and designed the spaces. Before the time of the Spanish, Acoma’s roofs had skylights to allow light in and smoke from the open interior fire out. When they had to rebuild the village, they used the Spanish version of fogon, or fireplaces, and chiflon, or chimney vents. Prior to the late 1800s, windows in structures throughout the southwest were small because the earliest peoples here would cover them with a weaving, animal hide, or a translucent stone like mica. There were no doors at the ground level because attacks from rival tribes were not uncommon. Residents accessed their homes by climbing to the tall first floor roof on a ladder at the south, which could be raised in case of attack. They then climbed a stepped wall to the third floor, where they entered the main home and climbed back down to the other levels by ladders inside. This is unique, as most other pueblos, including the other western tribes at Zuni and Hopi, were accessed from the second floor. The lower floor was used for storage. (Once upon a time, it was common for Acoma families to have three years’ worth of food stored in case of emergency or drought!!) The second floor was a living space, and the third floor was the main entrance as well as bedroom. With the arrival of the railroads, life would be forever altered throughout the New Mexican Territory. With railroads came trade, tourism, and supplies from the east and eventually, west – including milled lumber, glass windows, doors, stovepipes, nails, and locks, as well as paints and finishes that could now be bought at a mercantile or hardware store. In the 20th century, with less likelihood of attack and people leaving the mesa’s old village to be closer to work and summer gardens, came some of the other significant architectural changes at Acoma… by the 1920s, windows and doors were added to first floors. Also, everyone but the War Chiefs and other families required to live in the historic village for ceremonial purposes had moved from the mesa to the outlier villages closer to work and their summer farms near the river. In the years since, Acoma’s historic village has been transformed into more of a ceremonial space than a living space. Most families go there for special events and ceremonies. They usually do not stay for more than a week or two at a time on the mesa. This has resulted in making it harder to maintain the village, as families now have to maintain both their homes closer to town as well as the historic homes on the mesa. ********** Six Essential Building Materials Stone (Keres: Younii’) Stone was the first building material utilized at Acoma, as well as at the ancestral sites like those we know as Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Aztec Ruins. Some of these sites lend distinctive stone patterning to the architectural vocabulary. Stone is especially important in the Western Pueblos at Acoma and Zuni (and Hopi in Arizona), as water is scarce and therefore adobe more challenging to make and maintain. Stone in general is extremely durable, and sandstone “flakes” rather easily, making it a plentiful and abundant local natural building resource. Stone is often used in foundations and first floor walls at Acoma, as well as splashblocks beneath canales, blocking between vigas, and sometimes as a weather-resistant topping for walls. Stone is also used to help build dams for Acoma’s natural water cisterns on top of the mesa. Stone is often re-purposed, which makes using it a sustainable investment. In modern times, individual blocks of stone are also used at the edges of roofs to hold down asphalt and felt roofing so they do not pull away from the edge of the roof and expose the wood beneath to rainfall. Stone used in the cultural center uses all of these methodologies. The seven patterns used are from Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and other important ancestral sites. Mud (Keres: Yaashpatwii’) Mud is an essential building material throughout New Mexico. It is used for adobe as well as earth plastering. Mud is considered part of the culture of traditional communities because earth stucco has to be repaired annually. Almost every community has a storytelling, work, and feast tradition around the enjarre, or annual remudding, which was most often completed by the women of the community. This remudding usually occurs at Acoma in July and August after summer monsoons have filled the natural cisterns in the village. Clay, a specific type of mud, is an essential ingredient to pottery, another vitally important element of Puebloan culture and building, especially at Acoma. Muds used on the cultural center include traditional earth as well as gypsum or lime plasters. In the cultural center, the stone or adobe beneath might be exposed, a reference to how buildings change over time, and what we see as a beautiful and unique pattern of exposed stone today at Chaco Canyon was once a hidden element beneath earthen plaster. As well, in the Cultural Center, the adobe is allowed to slump, sliding out wider at the bases of the buildings, which echoes the slump found in traditional adobe walls once they have been replastered many times. There are six colors of plaster used on the Cultural Center, all of which come from pigments found within the immediate landscape. Several of the colors used are visible at small vista east of the observation pullout on the road north of the Cultural Center. Wood (Keres: Gootsi’) Wood is an essential element of traditional building throughout New Mexico. Local woods used in buildings at Acoma include juniper and piñon. Spruce, douglas fir, pine, and ponderosa from the surrounding mountains are also used. Traditional pueblo architecture used peeled logs for vigas, as well as smaller branches for latilla ceilings and ladders. Large stair treads may use half-cut (long-split) logs. Because of the difficulty in attaining the vigas, the room sizes were limited to the span of available timber – typically piñon or ponderosa pine, and rarely over 14 feet long. After the Spanish arrived, wood beams were often cut square or rectangular, as they were hand-carved using woodworking tools the Puebloans did not have. We may also see hand-adzed planks used on the ceiling or wood doors to represent the Hispanic influence. We also see hollowed out logs or eventually milled wood used in canales, or roof gutters. It was very common for Puebloans to dry meats, chiles, and edible and medicinal herbs by hanging them on wood branches strung between viga ends on the upper floors of the homes. Today, wood is used in all of these ways, as well as a siding for a sheds and barns, and used in furnishings and doors. Throughout the Cultural Center, we can see wood used in these methods. The patterns used on the wood represent Acoma’s pottery and weaving traditions, and prayers for rain. Intact beams, doors, corbels, and details from historic homes and the mission church have been carefully preserved and protected so this lasting legacy of Acoma design is preserved for generations to come. Natural Building Materials Cactus, willow, chamisa and yucca are also used from the local landscape for some aspects of building, including latillas, woven matting, as well as basketry. Tree Ring Dating Dendrochronology, or tree ring dating, is a form of measuring time in regard to construction. The process is simple: tree rings grow each season in response to variables of place and time. Those rings can be dated against other trees based on known periods of wetness and drought. In conifers, like pine and piñon, each ring contains two parts – an inner band of light cells and an outer band of dark cells, and a new ring is formed each season. It does not matter what species of tree we look at, if there was a drought in an area, all the trees of that period reflect that in the growth of their rings. By looking at the age of trees and their rings, we can determine the age of the tree when it was cut, as well as what year it was cut. Dendrochronology at Acoma indicates that cutting of the trees used as vigas in the current pueblo began in 1646. It also tells us that trees were cut in early fall and winter, and immediately debarked with steel axes. Although rooms may be built with as many as eight vigas, there was a clear preference for using six. Mica (Keres: Haashgaa’ni) Translucent mica, gypsum, or selenite were used in pre-20th century Puebloan windows. Mica allows light through, yet it is also good for UV protection and is heat-resistant. There is one mica window remaining at the historic village. Traditionally, mica was white or as close to colorless as possible. Archaeologists think that the mica used at Acoma was found along the river closer to Albuquerque. The innovative use of natural lighting with mica windows in the Cultural Center improved energy efficiency and also minimized potential negative impacts on collections – mica blocks UV rays and is nearly fireproof, withstanding temperatures up to 1,800˚! Corn (Keres: Yaaka’) Corn is used throughout the Southwest, not so much as a building material, but as a decorative element, as well as a ceremonial element that is particularly important to buildings. In many traditions, when a building is built or blessed, the corn’s delicate, powdery, cream colored pollen is used as part of that ceremony. As well, corn decorative elements are used in pictographs, petroglyphs, murals, carvings, jewelry, and ceremonial costuming throughout the region. The Cultural Center uses decorative elements of corn throughout, as well as having a traditional dryland garden in the front of the building which illustrates Acoma’s traditional farming methods. The Cultural Center’s café is called the Y’aaka café, or the corn café. Pottery (Keres: Dyuni’) Pottery is one of the essential elements of Southwest cultures from ancient to present. Our museums and collections are filled with intact pieces, and potsherds (broken pot pieces) are protected as cultural resources that should never be removed from their sites. Pottery has become essential for Acoma, as the site is far from the highway and major tourist areas and it requires both time and effort to get there. Acoma realized that the people that visited really loved their pottery, so some of their people began to make special pots to sell to tourists. This literally put Acoma on the map, bringing thousands of tourists every year, and Acoma’s pottery is now considered some of the finest in the world. Traditionally, Acoma pottery was used for collecting water, ceremony, cooking, and eating from. And broken pots are important too! Pots with their bottoms broken out were used as chimney pots and broken potsherds are added to clay to make new pots water-resistant. The Cultural Center uses decorative pottery details to honor their traditions and also celebrates the long tradition of making in its museums. Inside the space, a blown-up pattern from renowned Acoma potter Lucy Lewis is used as a decorative element for a window along a long hallway. Decorative tiles, pots, and sculptures throughout the building celebrate Acoma’s pottery culture from ancient to modern, using designs of old, as well as from modern designers Brian Vallo and Marilyn Ray, and designs from many of Acoma’s school-age children. Cloud Patterns Throughout Acoma’s pottery as well as the design of the cultural center are various forms of cloud patterns – often in some form of triangle motif. These represent prayers for rain. ********** Essential Building Forms Respect for the Landscape The landscape is an essential part of the relationship between Acoma’s people and their place. The buildings within and around the historic village respond directly to the land. The landscape is also seen as part of the experience of visiting Acoma. The goal is to get people who just came off the highway from the fast modern world… to slow down so they can really experience this unique place, its landscape, architecture, and people. The drive into Acoma is similar to the route that the people of Acoma took when they migrated to this place from points north. Experiencing that sense of coming home was essential in the design of the Cultural Center. Entering the Cultural Center from the north, a great window opens up to a view of the historic village on the mesa, and we know we have arrived. Water One of many aspects of sustainability that we pay close attention to in design today is access to water. Water is critical, not only for drinking and cleaning, but also for sustainable agriculture and food production. As Acoma has no natural running water sources, natural depressions in the rock (sometimes with man-made walls to help) have been used for many hundreds of years to collect water and snow at both the top and base of the mesa. Obtaining water has always been an essential aspect of living on the mesa, as photographer Edward Curtis captured in his photographs of elegant Acoma women gathering it in beautiful pottery jars at the turn of the last century. When it came time to design the Cultural Center, tribal elders determined that they did NOT want to do what most sustainability experts would tell them to do – capture the water that landed on the roof in metal or plastic cisterns for later use. Rather, they wanted to water to be allowed to fall, move from the building to the landscape, and be absorbed back into the earth to recharge the aquifer and feed the landscape around the building. To the Acoma people, water is alive. Allowing it to remain free and alive is more important than saving it to use later. It would also require sophisticated and expensive systems to clean the water to make it safe for human consumption. They decided that using technology to solve a problem that actually created more problems was not a truly sustainable solution. There is wisdom in this approach. Slots Slots in the sandstone landscape around Acoma are echoed in the village as well as in the Cultural Center. In the historic village, one primary slot orients from the main ceremonial plaza directly to Mount Taylor. Others seem to be just small spaces left between buildings. In the cultural center, slots are used to break up the large building, as well as, in the case of the great east-west running slot at the museum, to tell the story of Acoma’s sacred connection to the stars of the Milky Way, and the east-west alignment of the village to the movement of the sun. Environmentally Adaptive Design The Sky City Cultural Center and Acoma’s historic village are built to respond to adapt to the climate of high solar radiation, low humidity and little precipitation, moderate to high winds, and big temperature swings from day to night. Building on the high precipice of the mesa allows the village to be up in the layer of the atmosphere where the summer breezes are best. The way the buildings are arranged blocks the winter winds from the northwest with the high walls of the multi-story sections, and that also captures the summer breezes. The high north walls have very few, and very small openings, if they have any at all. That minimizes the cold air infiltrating the building in winter. The doors are often raised a foot or so above the ground plane, rather than having an entry flush to the ground outside. This helps hold in heat. As well, the shared walls between homes allows heat and coolness to radiate through the spaces more evenly. Interconnecting rooms, and their aligned openings from front to back of the structure, improves ventilation, cooling, heating, and lighting. Using the coldest rooms on the first floor for storage means materials and foods last longer. Fireplaces on interior walls prevent the heat stored in the masonry flue from being lost to the outside. Instead, your neighbors benefit from the heat produced. The main living areas are located in the south, and have larger openings to the outside, so those rooms are warm and full of light. Light paint and earth stuccos used inside the homes reflects natural light back into the depths of the structures. The central plaza, a space for dance, ceremony, and community gathering, is located such that it is sheltered from the worst of the winds. Even building houses to the north and west of the natural pools helps the Acoma people adapt to their environment… by building this windscreen between the wind (from the northwest) and the water, they minimize evaporation so the water is available to use for much longer. The rows of houses at Acoma are oriented such that the one row does not cast shade on another and deeply inset doors and windows provide their own shade in the summer when the sun is directly overhead. As well, overhangs at the roof parapets offer even more shade and a little place to stand outside but be mostly protected when it rains. Acoma’s terraces, orientation, and very thick walls act as thermal mass storage devices, which releases heat slowly in winter, and mostly keeps the heat out in summer. When University of Southern California professor and solar researcher Ralph L. Knowles had his students model Acoma for a study on energy efficiency in the late 1970’s, they identified “a significant relation between the building arrangement and the sun.” The Pueblo’s design absorbed solar radiation on the southern exposure, which would radiate into the interior rooms at night. This natural heating method would be assisted with the use of a small fireplace, which would keep the rooms at a comfortable temperature while using only a small amount of wood. At the Cultural Center, the façade faces north, which puts it in the shade most of the summer, making it a cool entry for when the center is open in spring, summer, and fall. As well, the east and west wings of the building protect the south courtyard from winds, and masonry walls, shade structures, and protected windows minimize solar gain in summer when too much heat is a problem, but also allow the sun in to maximize solar gain in the winter when additional heat is helpful and the sun is low. Terraces The stepped terraces of Acoma’s village and cultural center are an element of passive solar design. The sun naturally warms up the southern faces and roofs of the terraced buildings. The walls that face south absorb and reflect heat, which allows for exterior living spaces that are sheltered from the north winds and warmer for working outside in fall and the milder parts of winter. The heat stored in the walls and roofs slowly moves into the house overnight as the cold air outside pushes it inwards. This design also prevents overheating in most homes by shading them from the hot afternoon sun in the west. The third floor room is used as a bedroom, which because it is one of the smallest and highest rooms in the home, makes them warmer in winter. This works because heat rises up the ladders from the floors below to warm the space from within, and the heat captured from the south-facing walls from the sun and the south-facing windows warms up the small space through the day. The terraces are also used as a type of amphitheater from which to witness the seasonal ceremonial dances on the streetscape below. Corner Windows The corner windows used on the Cultural Center are cousins to the traditions of using mica for windows at Acoma as well as to the corner windows at Chaco Canyon. The Cultural Center’s windows, however, are made of tan-colored mica to keep the UV light out and protect the museum collections. The corner windows at Chaco would not have been covered with mica, as they had an important purpose – they were aligned to a specific star or star cluster that rose in the night sky at a certain time of year. The rising of these stars as seen through those windows told the Chacoan astronomers that it was time for a special ceremony, when a certain animal would come through the area, or the planting of a crop. Pintel Doors In the 1920’s, John Gaw Meem noted in his unpublished research on Acoma that a number of pintel or sanbullo doors still existed around the Pueblo. In pintel-style doors, one side extends into the header and threshold of the door to act as a hinge. We can check out the oldest form of this type of door when we enter the San Esteban del Rey Mission church – the sound of the 400+ year old door turning in its hinge is quite special. The Cultural Center uses wood, steel, and glass versions of these very cool doors. T-shaped Doors T-shaped doors are common at Acoma, and they are similar in design to their Chacoan ancestors. However, Chacoan T-shaped doors almost seem to have been designed for people carrying large pots and baskets (We should note here that most archaeologists see the T-shaped doors as a symbolic trait… they are not consistently placed in great houses and frequently don’t line up with each other. We do not really know what the T-shape is actually for.) The T-shaped doors at Acoma have a much higher cross of the T. Acoma elders explain that this is so they can keep the seed pots stored on these shelves away from creatures that would get into and eat the seeds. Acoma Fireplaces Where once upon a time, Acoma’s homes had open fireplaces in the center of the room with a skylight above in the roof, since Spanish times, venting and traditional fireplaces have been added. Acoma’s traditional fireplaces are distinctive however, as some variations have a wide firebox and vent-hood overhead, and others have a very tall vertical opening at the firebox. Square Kivas Acoma is one of the Western Pueblos, which share unique characteristics that the Rio Grande Pueblos do not. One of those shared design characteristics is the use of square kivas integrated into the residential blocks. This is the same style as those at Zuni and Hopi. Rio Grande Pueblos utilize round kivas set apart from the residential areas. Kivas are sacred chambers for praying together as a community. They are similar to churches. Ladders Ladders are common throughout the village. The long pointed ends on Acoma’s kiva ladders are designed to pierce the sky and bring rain. Carved horizontal bars across some of these ladders represent clouds. Rain is always a sacred prayer for the Acoma people, who pray not just for themselves, but for all of us. Stepped Divider Walls Stepped walls have been used as stairs to access Acoma’s third floors and their roofs for centuries. They also block winds at the entrances of the homes and hold the sun’s heat in winter so outdoor spaces are warmer. Next time you are outside and cold, sit in a corner of a stone or adobe wall facing the sun and you’ll see how this works!! Craft Craft is one of the essential elements of culture that represents all communities in New Mexico. Native American communities have been designing beautiful objects for daily and ceremonial life for thousands of years here. They have almost always used local materials. Sometimes they traveled far away to find certain materials, or they traded with visitors from far away like Mexico! When the settlers arrived from Spain some 400 years ago, they brought their own traditions, which were modified for how hard it was to get materials here, and then both Native and Hispanic traditions were fused into new traditions. When the Americans came, the same thing happened again – everyone learned and borrowed from everyone. But always, throughout time, people have realized (sometimes too late) that the old ways are worth preserving too. So they re-introduce and re-learn their old, more pure way of doing things… the ways that that best represent who they really are, and who their people really are, without all the outside influences that watered them down. Acoma has reclaimed their language, which was almost stolen from them when it was banned in the early 20th century, and they are trying very hard to keep their culture alive by building on old and new forms of their cultural traditions of weaving, basketry, pottery, and building. In the Cultural Center, Acoma’s craft tradition is celebrated with chimney pots, custom storytellers by Marilyn Ray, carved wood doors and furnishings with Acoma pottery and weaving designs, custom tiles with Acoma pottery designs by Brian Vallo, tiles with modern adaptations of pottery designs and storytelling elements by Acoma schoolchildren, hand-made traditional ladders, carved beams which feature Acoma corn and pottery designs, metal sculptural decorations of corn and pottery designs, metal grates with water symbols, a copper adaptation of a traditional Hispanic period tin ceiling, steel gates with pottery designs, and stone sculptures. Today, Acoma artists share their wide range of craft traditions with the world. One such artist, Acoma fashion designer Loren Aragon, just won Phoenix fashion week with this collection for his company Aconav! Carved Doors + Acoma Weaving Acoma’s weaving tradition, which was once carried out by talented male weavers, has been lost. The doors in the cultural center are an ode to this lost tradition. They feature manta designs from some of Acoma’s lost weavings now preserved in museum collections. Nichos Nichos are another of the universal elements of New Mexican design that come to us from both the Native American and Hispanic traditions. At Acoma, there are basically three types of nichos used: a small rounded nicho used for ceremonial purposes a medium nicho, sometimes which opens on two sides, which is used to put dry goods like seeds or grains in, then sealed over with plaster until it is time for those items to be used a medium to large nicho used for display of favorite objects, which may be cultural, natural, or manmade objects ********** A Holistic Approach to Sustainability What makes the approach to sustainability unique in the Sky City Cultural Center project is that it is really holistic. Not only did the design team harness architectural elements that tell the story of the Haak’umetra as a people through time, but they also harnessed the power of the living members of the Pueblo by asking, then deeply listening to them. The stories are ingrained in the intent of the design. When the Cultural Center was designed, talented members of the Pueblo were hired to make decorations for the building. Those decorations were of their place, their culture, and their time. They honored the past while also having modern elements that looked to the future. All of that leads to Cultural Sustainability. The artisans from Acoma who worked on the Cultural Center were paid fairly for their work, and in some cases taught new techniques, and teaching and archive spaces were designed into the building so more of Acoma’s people could learn their history as well as take classes on how to utilize their talents to grow their dreams and build stronger families. All of this was an investment in the people’s Economic Sustainability – their ability to make a living and build a happy life. As well, the design team designed the building to harness the full capacity of passive solar and eco-centric design – they took the great design elements present in the village and added more shading and efficient systems so Acoma could have a visitors facility that was built on the principals of great place-based and passive design that represented them as a people (and only them) was also comfortable for the modern visitor was capable of being maintained. That’s Architectural Sustainability. “I remember my first enjarre, or remudding, at Ranchos Plaza church just outside Taos. I was peeling bad mud off the base of the building, and I had gotten down to a layer that was mostly intact but I needed to clean up an area between two leaks. The center section came loose as a large chunk. It was clearly from a single layer of mud that had been applied in some previous enjarre. Beneath it were two perfect fingerprints from where someone had applied it who knows how many years before. I put my fingertips against the prints, and wondered who I was touching across time. That moment took my breath away. This building makes me think of that.” ********** Haaku’s Sustainable Roots in Chaco Canyon The roots of Acoma Pueblo extend deep and wide across the ancient American Southwest, including the magnificent sites of the Chaco Canyon National Historical Park. Let’s explore the wonders of Chaco, it’s connections to Acoma, and how both sites exemplify the deep roots of sustainability in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves the history and culture of the Pueblo people. Chaco Canyon is the ancestral home of Pueblo people and it is where many of the cultural traditions that are practiced to this day at Acoma, Zuni, Tesuque, Zia, Hopi, Taos, and other pueblos emerged. Chaco’s magnificent great houses – Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, and others – still tower over the canyon floor, while in the surrounding landscape, ancient roads and pathways to outlying villages and shrines offer silent testimony to the wonders of Chacoan society. Chaco Canyon was chosen as a place to live for a variety of reasons. From the time of the first Basketmaker villages in Chaco, Pueblo people lived there because it offered the abundant resources necessary to live a quality life – plants for food and medicine, arable land for agriculture, clay for pottery, stone for tools and building houses, wood for building, and water. Less tangible but no less important reasons to call it home include Chaco’s landscape and topography and what we believe is the spiritual quality of Chaco Canyon. Three of the great houses in Chaco Canyon (Pueblo Bonito, Penasco Blanco, and Una Vida) were built beginning in the early 800s after Pueblo people had lived in the area for hundreds of years. These pueblos were built in prime agricultural locations from east to west across Chaco Canyon. They were faced south and east to maximize solar gain. Although these great house structures began as relatively small buildings (50 rooms or thereabouts), over time they grew, with rooms and stories added. Pueblo buildings are typically terraced, with upper stories built above and back from lower stories. This building style allowed the ancient Chacoans to maximize their solar gain across all levels of their pueblos. By AD 950, Chaco Canyon had emerged as one of the most important ritual centers in the ancient Puebloan world. By 1060, the cluster of structures in what has been termed “downtown” Chaco–the immediate vicinity of Pueblo Bonito was laid out and largely constructed. Within about a square kilometer were four great houses–Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Pueblo Alto, along with numerous small house pueblos, and the stand-alone great kiva at Casa Rinconada. As part of Chacoan society’s growth after AD 1050, many miles of roads were built across the region, linking great house sites, shrines, smaller pueblos, and important, natural landscape monuments. Development of Chaco’s Great North Road occurred after AD 1050 and all of the northern Chacoan outliers were built after AD 1075. By AD 1090, northern Chacoan outliers at Salmon Ruins, Chimney Rock, Wallace, Lowry, and Morris 41 (and several other sites) were built and occupied. The east and west pueblos at Aztec were built between AD 1105 and 1125. This northern shift of focus, of people, and perhaps, of ceremonial importance, was complete by AD 1110-1125, when Aztec emerged as the largest Chacoan complex and the successor to Pueblo Bonito’s role in Chacoan society. By the late eleventh century, then, the unique nature of Chacoan society had emerged across what is now the Four Corners region. Chaco ritual was, by this time, “proven” and the appeal of the Chacoan ceremonial system rapidly expanded. As a result, more and more people came into Chaco, some to try to settle and others to participate in periodic ceremonies. Acoma Pueblo’s people (and those of other pueblos) migrated through the sites of Chaco Canyon and the Chacoan World as they moved across the landscape. Ultimately, folks came to the mesa and called Haak’u their new home. Correlating the essential elements at Acoma and Chaco At least five of Acoma’s essential materials and forms were also found in Chaco – stone, mud, wood, corn, and pottery. Archaeologists have not found evidence of the use of mica for windows in Chaco’s great houses or small pueblos. Chacoan Connection to the Landscape + Water The Chacoans grew corn, beans, and squash in large quantities in Chaco Canyon. Fields were planted in the floodplain and received water during rains. Other fields were put on terraces above the floodplain and water with a technique called pot irrigation – pots filled at a water source and carried by hand. Yet other fields were planted in upland settings and used runoff water. The Chacoans built ditches, ponds, and other features to manage and store water. The north side of the Canyon had a very sophisticated water collection system that collected the water that poured off the steep canyon walls during rainstorms. Soils is Chaco Canyon were of sufficient quality to allow the Chacoans to grow most or all of the food they needed. They also hunted large and small game and gathered a large variety of wild plants for food. Chacoan Use of Stone The stone used to build Chaco’s great houses was quarried at locations in the Canyon and some areas outside. One of the factors that drew Pueblo people to Chaco Canyon was the abundant, tabular sandstone present. Chacoan great houses contained more than 20 million pieces of sandstone! Much of this material was very fine and tabular in shape, and took painstaking skill to assemble into walls, rooms, and pueblos. Chacoan great houses were built with a variety of stone veneer patterns. Archaeologists have identified six or seven of these styles and they seem to be time-sensitive in Chaco Canyon. That is to say, Type I masonry is the earliest and was succeeded by Type II. These styles made variable use of different stone types – some include mostly thin tabular slabs while others made use of larger, brick-sized stone. It is unclear how and why these veneers styles changed through in Chaco. Some change may be related to the exhaustion of some masonry quarries in the Canyon that required a shift in type of stone use. The tabular style of masonry was preferred early in Chaco’s history and this type of stone may simple have been largely depleted in the Canyon, requiring longer and longer trips to find the necessary stone. The other possibility is that different groups of masons in Chaco simply trained in building different styles. This would have resulted in the variety of stone veneer patterns seen in the walls of Chacoan great houses. In this view, these masons worked within specific learning traditions that were perhaps similar to guilds in other parts of the world. Chacoan great houses were built with tens of thousands of trees and tree limbs harvested from a variety of locations. Chemical sourcing work shows that a good percentage of the wood used to built Chaco’s amazing architecture came from the Chuska Mountains (50 miles to the west of Chaco) and the forests around Mt. Taylor (some 55 miles to the south-southeast of Chaco). These high-elevation timbers included ponderosa pine, white fir, douglas fir, spruce varieties, and aspen (rare). A good percentage of local wood was used as well including pinon, juniper, douglas fir (from locations 10-15 east of Chaco) and cottonwood (rare). Chacoan Ethnobotany The ancient Chacoans used a great variety of natural plants found in the Canyon. Plants used for food and medicine included goosefoot, pigweed, purslane, beeweed, bugseed, winged pigweed, tansy mustard, sunflower, stickleaf, tobacco, groundcherry, globemallow, wild potato, ricegrass, dropseed, hedgehog cactus, prickly pear, yucca, walnut, juniper, pinon, sumac, saltbush, wild grape, horsetail, rush, reed, sedge family, and cattails. Chacoan Corner Windows Pueblo Bonito has several corner windows intentionally built into rooms. Two of these windows face east and were built to view the sunrise on the winter solstice… this is why they are now called “solstice windows”. Chacoan T-shaped doors Researchers have debated Chaco’s T-shaped doors for more than a century. Although some have suggested that these features were intended to allow people with wide burdens to pass more easily through different rooms in Pueblo Bonito and other great houses, analysis has shown that the T-shaped doorways were not built with this purpose in mind. While it would be incorrect to say that these doors are randomly spread across Chacoan great houses, it is true that they have limited occurrences. Because of this finding, many archaeologists infer that the T-shaped doorways had a ceremonial purpose. At the site of Salmon Pueblo, a Chacoan Outlier north of Chaco on the San Juan River, all of the original T-shaped were built in exterior room walls in rooms that faced the plaza. Thus, we can suggest that these doorways were portals that allowed residents to pass from “inside,” private space to “outside,” public space. Our deepest thanks to contributor, archaeologist Paul Reed, for this assessment!!! Paul Reed is a Preservation Archaeologist with the Tucson, Arizona-based non-profit Archaeology Southwest and works as a Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico. Reed has been employed in this position for 16 years. Reed’s most recent writing is a book co-edited with Gary M. Brown entitled Aztec, Salmon, and the Pueblo Heartland of the Middle San Juan, to be published in SAR Press’ Popular Series in the summer of 2018. He also served as both editor and contributing author on Chaco’s Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region After AD 1100, published by the University of Utah Press (2008). Reed was also editor and author of several chapters of the three-volume, comprehensive report entitled Thirty-Five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico published in 2006 by the Center and the Salmon Ruins Museum. His other books — The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon and Foundations of Anasazi Culture (as editor) — have explored the origins of Pueblo culture and Chaco Canyon. During the last four years, Reed has been working to protect the Greater Chaco Landscape from the effects of expanded oil-gas development associated with fracking in the Mancos Shale formation. Through a series of meetings and forums with public officials, Tribal leaders, various US Government agencies, and New Mexico’s Congressional delegation, Archaeology Southwest and its partners have focused on expanding protections to sites, traditional cultural places, and fragile landscapes in the greater San Juan Basin. ********** Videos Emergence: Acoma Sky City Cultural Center, Full Documentary Music by Frederick “Rick” Aragon • Learn more about this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9gkoxn1Zng Acoma Pueblo Culture and Language This compilation contains content that was edited out from our documentary, Emergence: Sky City Cultural Center and the Architecture of Acoma Pueblo. These sections of oral history were so special, we decided to re-edit to offer a small insight into Acoma’s culture and traditions. This offering is a gift for our Acoma grandmothers, Marilyn Ray and Prudy Correa. May your words and traditions carry on. ♥ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mygtBWWpEwI Acoma Language Highlights: Western Keres How to say Hi, How are you, and Thank you in Western Keres, the language of Acoma and Laguna Pueblos. This offering is a gift for our Acoma grandmothers, Marilyn Ray and Prudy Correa, who sat with us for these oral history interviews. May your words and traditions carry on. ♥ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldamXToXIg ********** Teacher’s Guide Teacher's Guide Lessons Included herein is a unit of lessons about Acoma Pueblo and the Sky City Cultural Center. This curriculum begins with the video called “Emergence: Sky City Cultural Center” on the home page, then moves through the other sections of the site. Each lesson is designed for middle school students. Common Core Learning Standard(s) Addressed 6.R.I.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue. 6.W.1.b Text Types and Purposes: Support claim(s) with clear reasons and relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text 6.W.2 Text Types and Purposes: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content. 6.W.7 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate. 6.W.9 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. 6-8.R.ST.2 Key Ideas and Details: Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; provide an accurate summary of the text distinct from prior knowledge or opinions. 6-8.R.H.3 Key Ideas and Details: Identify key steps in a text’s description of a process related to history/social studies (e.g., how a bill becomes law, how interest rates are raised or lowered). Learning Target(s): Students will be able to: Investigate, discover, and describe the influence of history, geography, and craft/architecture on communities and cultures. Investigate, discover, and describe Pueblo culture and architecture. Investigate, discover, and describe aspects of sustainable design. Investigate, discover, and describe the essential building elements of any New Mexican architecture. Locate and map Acoma Pueblo and other pueblos. Demonstrate comprehension of economic and cultural sustainability as well as architectural sustainability. Activities/Tasks: Answer the questions for each learning module (see Lesson Plans). Research and produce a report on any New Mexican Pueblo’s culture, to include: history, geography, cultural information, craft traditions, architecture, and a map of the pueblo’s location in the state of New Mexico. Research and produce a report on favorite aspects of sustainable design introduced in this series. Explain how you might use it today in your own community.