The Jamaica I Know, Part II.

Boats at the fishing village next to Clinton's cafe. The fish go directly from the ocean to these boats to the cook's pan to your plate. I had snapper and lionfish.

Aerodynamic egrets.

A Rasta food shop.

At the Hamden distillery, where they make a distinctively aromatic rum, that lives up to its name ["Rum Fire"]...The distillery is run by two brothers - no recipes are written down, no formulae, nothing - just traditions and methods passed down by word of mouth. The molasses on the floor of the distillery was at least 2" thick.

Tinsley house, out in the countryside of Trelawney Parish. The going is slow in these parts - huge potholes, goats, etc. Note the sugarcane growing in the fields in the foreground...

The town of Falmouth, from the Anglican church tower. This pic is from last year, so the cruise ship wharf is not completed yet.

The Jamaica I know [Pt 1]

Rosie's hair salon, down the street from the manse. THE place to go for braids.

Albert George Market, c. mid 19th century, in Water Square, Falmouth.

Around Falmouth.

My favorite sign in town: Dee and Pee's Records and Children's Boutique.

Here are some photos from around Falmouth that I took this morning. I'm not sure of the percentages, but I would venture a guess that 90-95% of tourists that come to Jamaica don't make it outside their all-inclusive resorts. Most Americans [in my experience] don't think of Jamaica as a place with something besides beaches, rum punch, and reggae, or an architecture and a history worthy of investigation. I'm not sure why, but it's disappointing.

In any case, I feel privileged to have spent about two months here so far, and hope to come back - even [especially!] to the Manse, with its spotty running water, mosquito nets and bunk beds, porridge breakfasts, and zero AC. At this point, honestly, I would be kind of disappointed if those things changed.

As an almond falls from the tree over my head, and to the sounds of the table saw, I think I'll eat a mango from this tree over here.

Of roof combs and vented ridges. [Or, why old buildings teach us old tricks].

Roof section axon, comb vent.

Roof section axon, underside of roof lath detail.

Yesterday I worked on a detail for the ecoMOD team, who's working here in the Field School on the 6th iteration of UVA's ecoMOD project, in partnership with Falmouth Heritage Renewal.The detail, for a modified comb vent at the ridge of a hip roof, is based on both vernacular detailing and on basic thermal properties [heat rises!] The team had already run some tests using fluid dynamic modeling, and I was tasked with taking those findings and translating it to a simple, field-buildable detail that could be easily replicable on other houses in Falmouth or around Jamaica. 


By just adding some additional furring, and some strategically placed blocks, the ridge section can be lifted above the main body of the roof, allowing heat to escape. The blocks are placed to provide enough support for the ridge cap, as well as to get secure fastening surfaces and eliminate punctures through the corrugated roof sheathing. The ridge section is lapped over the sheathing to protect the sheathing fasteners and keep out driving rain. Insect screen can be installed under the ridge furring blocks as well.

Additionally, the students found that by placing lath on the underside of the rafters, the naturally occurring convection loop [heat rises!] is accelerated and aided, as long as complementary floor level vents are also installed. With temperatures reaching about 140 degrees Fahrenheit at the ridge, pulling 75-80 degree air from under the house becomes critical to keeping cool. 


This detail will be used here on ecoREMOD2, and will hopefully become part of the library of details that can be used on historic homes here in Falmouth that FHR works on - and represents, for me, the kind of technologies I'm interested in finding, highlighting, and understanding on this research trip. The other aspect of the students' work that's of interest to me is the quantitative analysis. While I'm not an engineer or a scientist, partnering the qualitative with the quantitative, especially on details and strategies that haven't been analyzed like this, is the way that this kind of research reaches beyond the anecdotal, the observational, and the merely descriptive to the provable and applicable, for both historians and architects. Or, also, those crazy enough to try being both. 

Ground gutters.

Ground gutter, Good Hope [c. 1760], Jamaica.

Ground gutter, New Seville [c. 1745], Jamaica.

I don't know if it's because it's raining buckets here everyday, but ground gutters seem to be cropping up a lot in my explorations around Jamaica. It makes sense - get the water to the ground and away from the building as fast as possible. The ground gutters only work, though, if they have eaves or scuppers that throw the water into the gutter - and there seem to be a wide variety of eave depths here in Jamaica, ranging from extremely deep [8' or so over a porch] to almost nonexistent. It would be interesting to tie in the eave depths to specific [ie conscious] strategies for water and sun mediation.

It's on my list of things to do to look into the annual rainfall here in Jamaica; I know the hurricane season is upon us, but how does the rainfall occur over the course of the year? Understanding this will give clues as to why these gutters were set up this way, and could shed light on cistern sizes, when and how cisterns were used, if other water sources were needed, etc. Maybe others have already determined these things, but I've been gradually coming to this as a trajectory in this research - combining field observation and sketching with quantifiable data. In other words, what does the carrying capacity of a cistern against the annual rainfall patterns tell us about how people utilized and sourced water [and perhaps still may utilize and source water]? And further, how could that combination of information inform design strategies in the post-MEP world? 

Side note: I'm trying to come up with a better term than "post-MEP" - what I mean by that term is "the world after air conditioning, mechanical systems, electricity, or electrically assisted running water." I tried "post mechanical," but that leaves out amazing mechanical strategies like the 18th century water mill here in Falmouth. And I tried "post grid-tied," but that also narrows the definition of "grid," assuming an electrical grid, and nosing out complex grid systems like the Inkas' pan-mountain urban planning strategies I saw in Peru. And finally, I've tried "post-HVAC," but that's too narrow too. So, I guess I'll keep thinking on that one. 

In any case, it's finally stopped raining [for now], and I'm being serenaded to sleep by the tree frogs and reggae music from Club Nazz next door.   

Update

Above Machu Picchu, Peru. March 2011.

Ok, back in action....

I've been in Jamaica for the last week, attending the Vernacular Architecture Forum conference here in Falmouth, and will be here all week nosing around, hanging out with the UVA Field School crew, and trying to stay dry...Coming blog attractions include some interesting rainwater collection strategies, thoughts on louvres, and general love for one of my favorite places in the world.

Also, interspersed - thoughts on Peru, which I visited in early March for two weeks. 

I hope you'll leave your own comments and thoughts too - I will be traveling from now until early September, and my basic itinerary is something like this [research sites are bolded, I'll be spending 10-14 days in each research city]: 

Falmouth, Jamaica

USA: Boston, Philly, Lancaster

Beijing, China

Trans-Mongolian Railway

Ulan Bator [and countryside adventures], Mongolia

Seoul, South Korea

Hanoi, Vietnam

Hoi An, Vietnam

Kuala Lampur, Malaysia

Malaka, Malaysia

Singapore

Perth, Australia

home!

I'll be logging about 18,000 air miles, and traveling by train, bus, boat, foot, ox cart, horse, jeep, subway, tram, taxi, and hopefully a few things as yet to be discovered. I have 1 backpack, 4 sketchbooks, 1 camera, 2 pairs of shoes, 1 tinwhistle, 5 phrasebooks, among some other things. I plan on seeing the Great Wall in China, living with nomads in Mongolia, taking the train the length of Vietnam, seeing the stars from the southern hemisphere [again!], and filling my sketchbooks. And, seeing some sweet architecture.