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(Miquel Ramis)
Coober Pedy es una ciudad minera del desierto australiano.
Allí se extrae el ópalo.
una piedra semipreciosa. Los mineros descubrieron
pronto que mientras en el exterior tenían 50
grados, en el interior de las minas la temperatura se
mantenía estable durante todo el año a
unos 25 grados. Por tanto, decidieron vivir bajo el
suelo. En realidad, no hacían más que
reinventar, por pura lógica lo que ya habían
hecho los chinos, turcos de capadocia, en Anatolia,
los habitantes de cuevas en andalucía , incluso
los romanos en Túnez.
La simple decisión de recortar un agujero cuadrado
en el suelo y cavar habitaciones a los cuatro lados
del patio, proporciona inmejorables condiciones bioclimáticas,
con paredes de grosor ilimitado que detienen tanto el
frío como el calor.
Ver Bulla regia, Túnez
(http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/1980-11-01/Underground-Homes.aspx)
he remains of Bulla Regia, which was a rich Roman town
during the early years of the Christian era, can be
found in the green Tell (coastal) region ... close to
the Algerian border. Back in the days of Rome's "bread
and circuses", this African province supplied much
of the wheat used to make the storied Latin loaves.
In fact, Roman colonists (usually they were military
veterans) who settled in the fertile Medjerda River
basin often grew rich in the grain trade, and the exquisite
underground villas that their wealth allowed them to
construct are now unique tourist attractions.
The transplanted Romans, who loved beauty and comfort
— but not African summers — faced a dilemma:
The same sun that ripened their grain caused them great
discomfort. They remembered, however, that country houses
in the hotter sections of Italy had long incorporated
earth-covered "summer bedrooms", and the colonists
simply carried the homeland idea a step further . .
. by designing entire warm-weather houses underneath
their aboveground winter dwellings.
By placing their summer quarters below the earth's
surface, the ancient innovators were able to take advantage
of the insulation provided by the surrounding soil ..
. and, by directing air through vents in the cooling
earth, they made the homes more comfortable still. (The
combination resulted in a natural air conditioning system
with no mechanical parts to break down and no power
bills!)
But mere shelter from the heat wasn't enough to satisfy
members of such a highly civilized culture, so the Romans
added aesthetic touches: columns, pools, fountains,
arches, wall paintings, and mosaics. In short, the softly
lighted underground homes became showplaces in which
provincial wheat farmers spent the hot seasons in comfort,
surrounded by beauty.
Furthermore, it's still possible to judge just how
comfortable the ancient homeowners were, although almost
2,000 years have passed. Not long ago — on an
afternoon when only an occasional palm raised a browned
and feathery frond above the parched countryside, and
heifers tried to find sleep in the shade of ancient
walls — a native guide led my tour group down
the stairs to such an underground villa. Maybe the Latins
would have sighed, " Ah, refrigeratio! " upon
entering . . . but we exclaimed, "What a relief!"
The temperature was at least 20 degrees cooler than
that of the outside air!
THREE BASIC FLOOR PLANS
Interestingly enough, most of Caesar's subjects who
settled in Bulla Regia used one of three basic floor
plans: [1] a vestibule running along three contiguous
main rooms whose rear windows opened — in common
— onto a large, deep air shaft, [2] a central
courtyard, or peristyle, surrounded by rooms that had
aboveground windows and openings in their ceilings,
and [3] a hallway with shallow rooms on either side
that incorporated windows set high in the upper walls.
(The basement dwellings, though often smaller than those
on the surface, frequently duplicated portions of the
structures' ground-level floor plans.)
PLAN NUMBER ONE
The "House of Amphitrite" is a large version
of the first design. (In addition to the three main
rooms, it has two tiny chambers situated across the
vestibule.) This residence, the floor of which is almost
17 feet below ground level, still retains some stucco
wall panels and mosaics.
The inlaid lobby floor — picturing a female face
framed by a leafy border — is in a state of excellent
preservation, and visitors can still see where a marble
fountain was once embedded in a nearby wall. The large
central dining room has two columns facing the entryway,
a vaulted ceiling, and a pastel floor mosaic portraying
the "Triumph of the Marine Venus". (Years
ago, an erroneous identification of the pictured goddess
as Amphitrite, wife of Neptune, gave the house its name.)
PLAN NUMBER TWO
A dwelling known as the "Hunting Palace"
is typical of Plan Two. Below the spacious courtyard
(almost 27 by 32 feet) on the main floor, eight 16-foot-high
Corinthian columns support the ground-level ceiling
... which is pierced with hexagonal openings to serve
as air and light sources for the underground peristyle.
The rooms open to the north and west. Three bays, which
are separated by two large columns, give access to a
large dining room, whose decorated floor covers a circular
storage cistern more than four feet in diameter. Baked
earthen pipes in the ridged molding of the arched ceiling
empty into the reservoir.
Simple mosaics and raised platforms indicate the one-time
placement of beds in three sleeping chambers, which
are copies of those upstairs. (Most of the rooms are
rectangular, with two ceiling holes apiece to admit
light and air.)
One good example of the third floor plan is the "House
of the Peacock". Fourteen steps descend about ten
feet . . . to a passageway with rooms on both sides.
The first chamber to the left is a sleeping room: It
was identified as such on the basis of the bed platform
against the back wall. The large room to the right opens
— on the south side — to a smaller chamber
which has an apse with an almost effaced peacock mosaic.
(Across the road from "the Peacock" is another
interesting Plan-Three house. Its ingenious owner simply
transformed two pre-existing deep cisterns into rooms
when the family decided to "move down".)
ESCAPE IN THE DESERT
But northwest Tunisia isn't the only place in the nation
that's known for underground living. In the hills of
the great desert that lies to the south, some 12,000
Berbers live in the earth .. . 3,000 in the town of
Matmata alone. This barren terrain looks like Star Wars
country, and — in fact — the "props"
left here and there are reminders that movie cameras
once recorded space fantasies in this desert.
Evidence of day-to-day life is usually first seen in
the form of smoke escaping from the holes that pock
the "lunar" land scape. The Berbers' dwellings
are located around bowl-shaped depressions, perhaps
33 feet in diameter by 20 to 25 feet in depth. Families
escape the elements in rooms carved into the rims of
the craters: small cocoons in the rock — reached
by descending stairs or ramps — which are cool
in hot weather and warm in chilly times.
The tattooed Berber women are proud of their homes.
Whitewashed walls and earthen floors, kept tidy by repeated
scrubbings and sweepings, take the place of the ancient
Romans' mosaics and marble . . . and the result is clean,
cool, and inexpensive housing.
UNDERGROUND HOTELS
Tourists can even sample subsoil living themselves
. . . in Matmata's two "crater" hotels. I
recommend the Sidi Driss, which has 27 rooms —
some with baths — connected by tunnels. Guests
can sip tea in an enclosure ringed with white and ocher
walls, and retire to pleasant chambers that are cooled
by air flowing from the courtyard and corridors.
Underground housing may be part of a dreamed-about
future for many of us, but in North African Tunisia
it's a part of the past . . . and the present!
Ver Capadocia: termiteros humanos
Ver Ellora: el templo-escultura
Ver Tindaya: la escultura en negativo
Ver Coober Pedy, Australia
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