The Gray Porch

Compressed earth block, load-bearing, three stories, which most engineers in the county will tell you cannot be done and which has now been standing here for eleven years. The blocks were pressed on site from the soil excavated for the foundation, stabilized with five percent cement, and left exposed inside and out. The color is the color of the lot. Where the walls have weathered on the east elevation they have gone slightly paler, and the architect's office has photographs of the same wall each year since handover showing exactly how far that has traveled. The porch of the name runs the full eastern face at second floor, eight feet deep, screened in terracotta breeze block laid in a pattern that gets progressively more open toward the top. Sitting there in the morning you get moving light and no glare. It is the best room in the house and it is not technically a room. Energy performance is not a talking point here so much as a consequence: the earth walls are sixteen inches thick and the interior sits five to seven degrees below ambient through August and September without mechanical help. This property sold in March. It is listed because owners of buildings like this tend to ask us to keep looking, and because there is a waiting list of two for anything comparable.