Earth Building and Restoration Workshop
Thursday, February 26, 2026
2:00-6:00 pm
Gutiérrez-Hubbell House, Albuquerque, NM
Workshop Shuttle will leave from UNM Predock Center for Design + Research
The intent of this workshop is to provide participants in the NCBDS Conference with a minimal understanding of the history, pathologies, and processes involved in the preservation of earthen architecture. The workshop will take place at the Gutiérrez-Hubbell House in Albuquerque's South Valley.
This site is now being managed by the Bernalillo County Parks and Recreation Department. They purchased the property in the latter part of the 1990s with the intention of serving as a living museum. After many years of funding, youth training, and community participation, the county was able to restore it, using traditional and appropriate methodologies.
Cornerstones Community Partnerships (CCP), a regional NGO, was instrumental in developing a plan to incorporate community needs into the work. Francisco Uviña-Contreras, Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico's School of Architecture and Planning, will lead this workshop. He was one of the responsible CCP members in the restoration and youth development programs at the site.
The workshop will include a brief historical background of the building and the site, as well as a walk around the property, noting the distinct historical typologies since its initial inception. Participants will have the opportunity to get their hands dirty by constructing or manufacturing adobes (mud bricks) and applying mud plaster to a site yard wall or an Horno (traditional baking oven). All these activities will include specific explanations of soil characteristics, as well as the history and intentions behind the traditional maintenance of these structures.
Francisco Uviña Contreras
Francisco Uviña Contreras received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture, minoring in Art History in 1994 from the School of Architecture and Planning (SAAP) at the University of New Mexico. Francisco received his Masters of Architecture and Masters Certificate in Preservation and Regionalism in 2009 from the University of New Mexico where he graduated with distinction. Francisco worked for Cornerstones Community Partnerships, a non for profit organization, from 1994 to 2008 to assist with field assessments, documentation of historic buildings, adaptive re-use design and new design work utilizing traditional building methods as the Architectural/Technical Manager. In 1996 he served as the only North American representative to participate in an international five-week training program in Perú in the restoration, conservation and new design of earthen buildings; the program was sponsored by CRATerre in France, The Getty Conservation Institute in the US and the International Center for the Study of the Preservation & Restoration of Cultural Properties (ICCROM) in Italy. In 1999 Francisco was invited on contracted to teach in the same five week Latin American program in Perú. Francisco is the co-author and illustrator of Cornerstones’ Adobe Architecture, A Conservation Handbook. Since 2009 Francisco has been teaching architecture undergraduate and graduate design studios, preservation courses, as well as planning courses and studios at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico. In the present Francisco serves as the Director for the Historic Preservation and Regionalism Graduate Certificate Program at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico.