The WARE Collective

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The WARE Collective

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The WARE Collective was formed in 2017 and promotes the preservation of historic structures and tradi

08/28/2026

Lime has been a cornerstone of Jamaican construction for centuries.

Explore another vignette from the brilliant article in the ‘Jamaica Journal’ (Vol. 20, No. 1, February - April 1987), written by our very own Ann Hodges. This article is part of her series on Jamaican Traditional Building Materials and Techniques. This vignette was created in conjunction with Field Notes From The Archive.

Swipe through this carousel for a collage of knowledge, featuring original images and illustrations directly from the article. Alongside these are photos of recent work with lime, showing how this timeless knowledge continues to shape our preservation efforts today.

08/14/2026

A home isn’t complete without a roof above it. Here Mr. Parchment teaches volunteers how to use bull thatch to construct a roof. Offering good ventilation, ingenious protection from rain and sun, our ancestors developed a durable and versatile roof solution. As long as there is a solid frame to support the thatch, the possibilities are numerous.

06/23/2026

Mr. Cummings walked us through the mechanics of using split bamboo for the wattling (the woven framework you see at the top) before packing the lower section with the daub (the earth and clay mixture at the bottom).

Seeing the raw textures exposed side-by-side on the bathroom structure really shows how straightforward, yet incredibly strategic, ancestral building technologies are. No manufactured drywall, just local material science at work.

EcoConstruction

06/05/2026

Today is World Environment Day! 🌍

To celebrate, we’re throwing it back to our 2024 on-site workshop.

Traditional building methods only work if they make sense for how we live today, which means our time on site is spent balancing old-school material science (like keeping raw lime from absorbing CO2 too early) with modern practicalities (like where to hide the electrical conduits).

This framing right here is for the new on-site bathroom structure. We’re working with round timber posts, getting the skeleton up, and figuring out how to neatly run modern plumbing and wiring through traditional setups without disrupting the structural integrity or aesthetics of the build.

It’s a lot of alignment, a lot of patience, and a serious amount of elbow grease to get these pieces sitting right.

Designing around a traditional tank means balancing ancestral water-harvesting methods with modern 21st-century functionality. Building like this aligns perfectly with the theme of World Environment Day, "Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future." This is at the heart of what we do at WARE.

05/12/2026

Spanish Wall is a traditional Jamaican building technique, where a hardwood timber frame is filled with broken limestone stones, packed in a mortar made from local earth and lime. (Limestone is widely available and abundant across rural Jamaica, including in parishes like St. Elizabeth. )

The whole thing is then plastered over with a lime and mortar mix, which is why from the outside it just looks like a regular wall, you’d never know what’s going on inside it.

Builders used what the land gave them, and the result was thick, solid walls that stayed cool in the heat and held up through decades of tropical weather.

Houses like this one are becoming increasingly rare. As they fall into disrepair, the knowledge of how they were built, and what it would take to restore them properly, risks disappearing along with them.

That’s exactly the kind of structure the Wattle and Red Earth Collective documents, researches, and works to preserve 🇯🇲

05/04/2026

This is traditional thatched roof construction being done by Mr. Guy Parchment.

This is one of the oldest building techniques in Jamaica. Dried palm leaves are layered and tied in overlapping rows, working from the bottom of the roof upward so each layer sheds water onto the one below it. Done right, a thatched roof keeps a structure cool, handles rainfall well, and can last years before it needs replacing.

Before zinc and concrete took over, this is how Jamaican homes were covered. The materials came from the land, the knowledge came from the community, and the result was a roof that actually made sense for the climate 🌴

02/05/2026

2025 felt like a year and a half, we faced such unprecedented events, both locally and regionally. We look back at some of the highlights and milestones from the past year. A huge thank you to all of our volunteers, friends, members and executive body for their dedication and time sent throughout the year. As we continue to rebuild in the aftermath of Melissa, we look forward to 2026 with hopeful eyes.

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Clearwater, FL

Website

http://thewarecollective.com/

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