The Tarim Conservation Project website documents the preservation of historic palaces of the Hadhramaut Valley in Tarim, Yemen. The principal investigators are art historian/archaeologist Dr. Selma Al-Radi, co-director of the ‘Amiriya Restoration Project in Rada’, Yemen, and architect/architectural conserator Pamela Jerome, an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and a senior associate with Wank Adams Slavin Associates, a New York architecture and engineering firm. The trainees will be students from the historic preservation program of the GSAPP, along with Museum of the Hadhramaut personnel, and architecture students from the University of Mukallah. The significance of the Tarimi palaces and the fact that most of them are undocumented led us to propose their listing on the World Monuments Fund 100 Most Endangered Sites list for 2000-01. We have just received word that the site has been selected for re-listing on the 100 Most Endangered Sites list for 2002-03. Be sure to check out the visual resources page.
Great Wall of China Plundered for Road Paving
Almost 100 meters of the Great Wall in Xinxing village, Zhongwei City was destroyed last month after being plundered for road building materials, according to Ningxia Daily. Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has been called “the Great Wall Museum” because of its profusion of rammed earth sections, but it only took two nights on January 23 and 24 to wreck the Xinxing stretch.
Historical Earth Architecture at Durham
The University of Durham School of Engineering is examining investigative techniques and the structural behavior of Rammed Earth. They aim to combine knowlege of Structural Mechanics with numerical and Computer modelling, with work on soil mechanics, to help preserve Earthen Architecture.