Traditional Materials Meet Modern Innovation at Keene State College

Something you might not expect to see on Keene State’s modern-day campus is a wigwam—a dome-shaped shelter traditionally used by Indigenous peoples of North America—or an adobe hut, a building style commonly found in the Southwest.

Yet, these seemingly out-of-place structures have become a hub of innovative research for the College’s sustainable product design and innovation and architecture programs, where professor and student teams collaborate on building functionality and environmental impact.

For passers-by, the structures caused quite a stir.

“Everyone thought it was a hoot. They just wanted to know what it was,” Paul Fowler, assistant professor of architecture, said. But beyond piquing curiosity, the intent was “to establish if that type of structure, which was used long ago, could provide comfort at the same level as we see today,” Fowler explained. The answer turned out to be yes. “There’s no air conditioning obviously, but heat would be the big deal here in New England. And you can heat one of those structures to be nice and warm.”

The wigwam, a temporary structure, served as an experiment to test whether purely visual instructions could be effective for building emergency shelters such as in refugee camps. Fowler acted as a resource for a team of students that took on the construction project primarily using branches and tarps.

In addition, they “tested the wigwam for air quality, hydrothermal properties, and several other things,” said Zachary Punch ’24, who helped carry the grant-subsidized work forward in the summer of 2024.

When Punch was approached by Fowler and architecture department chair Fernando del Ama Gonzalo about constructing an adobe hut, he accepted and was ultimately awarded a Summer Undergraduate Fellowship (SURF) grant. “The adobe hut became an extension of this work. And the department hopes to do different materials in the future,” Fowler noted.

Continued Fowler, “The fact that the college is willing to fund student work like this is brilliant and appreciated. Without that extra help, it wouldn’t have been able to happen.”

The stipend enabled Punch to concentrate on his research endeavor for the summer of his senior year. “I wanted to know if adobe is a practical building material in New England.”

Punch had never used adobe—Spanish for mudbrick—despite being part of the construction world since childhood. In his early years, he did tree work and later served in the Army operating construction equipment. When his service ended he built his own business as a carpenter. “So, I knew a lot about building stuff,” he laughed.

Since neither he nor Fowler had previously worked with adobe, they talked strategy throughout the process. “We figured that stuff out together. He’s great to work with,” Punch said.

First Punch built molds and filled them with 25 percent clay and 75 percent sand, with an aggregate mixed in.

“We used ground-up grapevines because they have tannins in them that are supposed to help hold the bricks together well,” Punch said. When he ran out of vines from his yard he switched to cellulose insulation, a shredded mix of recycled paper products.

After being poured, the material needed to sit for several days before removing the molds. Even then, the bricks couldn’t be moved for an additional week. As Punch got underway with the actual build he didn’t encounter many obstacles, except for keeping things dry. “It was a huge challenge,” he said.

During summer rains he traveled to the project site to cover and uncover the molds with tarps.

While that added some difficulty, Punch is a proponent of the material, which can typically be sourced and mixed on-site. “If you’ve got a stream nearby, you probably have clay and sand. And then you can even use lawn clippings as an aggregate. So that aspect of it is really sustainable,” he noted.

Right now, the adobe structure is undergoing similar functionality tests to the wigwam.

“As far as the moisture content and energy usage of the building, I’d say the adobe seems more sustainable short-term,” Punch said. “The humidity levels are off the charts,” Fowler added. “You have earthen bricks that were made with a process that used a lot of water, and whenever it rains, they absorb a lot of water that then gets released into the interior.”

The hut will remain in place over the year so data can continue to be gathered.

“Long-term, I’m not sure how it’s going to do because it takes so much more energy to burn off the moisture,” Punch said. “If you go in that hut and there’s no heater going, it just feels more humid than everywhere else.”

So what’s next for the team? “I’m interested in comparing it to something more modern like a straw bale home,” Fowler said. “There’s a revival of straw houses, where they’ll build a regular two-by frame, fill the inside with straw, and then plaster over the outside,” Punch described.

Another idea, raised by del Ama Gonzalo, is a 3D-printed home, typically made with concrete.

“The problem is that it’s fairly permanent,” Fowler noted. The structures on campus are designed to be removable. Whichever material becomes the focus next, Fowler said, “there’s a vision of a multitude of these happening so we can compare the data.”

The information they’ve garnered so far has already been put to good use. In October 2024, Punch traveled to Massachusetts to present his research on the hut at the Council of Public Liberal Arts College annual conference.

Punch, Fowler, and del Ama Gonzalo also co-authored a paper about the team’s use of software to test and monitor the hut’s energy performance during various times of the year. Del Ama Gonzalo presented it at the International Conference on Sustainability, Technology and Education in Budapest, Hungary.

This kind of hands-on research underscores the department’s focus on innovation and real-world impact, particularly in the area of sustainability—core values of Keene State. Punch’s journey reflects the program’s dedication to preparing students for future challenges, including climate resiliency, and provided him with skills and experience he plans to continue building on as he begins graduate-level study in the fall of 2025.