Quake Safe

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Quake Safe is a frame made from string, bamboo and wire, which can be either retrofitted into an existing adobe (mud brick) house or incorporated into a new house as it’s being built, in order to give it a much higher level of structural protection against earthquakes. The invention was created by Faculty of Engineering Ph.D Student at the University of Technology in Sydney, Dominic Dowling. The frame is designed to be affordable to people who live in adobe houses, particularly the poorer rural communities of Central America. [ interview | video ]

The World Adobe Forum

The World Adobe Forum is an exciting new medium for the sharing of information related to adobe research and application, focusing on understanding and reducing seismic vulnerability. The main objective of the forum is to provide a medium for the sharing of information related to improved-adobe research and application.

Association La Voute Nubienne

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Population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, together with increasing desertification and regression of forested areas, means that the use of timber in traditional building techniques is no longer feasible and the alternative of using corrugatedd iron is expensive and thermally and acoustically problematic. The Association La Voute Nubienne’s primary objective is to persuade people to use the Nubian Vault technique as a valid alternative to traditional building methods in rural areas of Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries of the Sahel. Using a simplified and codified adaptation of the classic Nubian vault technique which Hassan Fathy broght back into the public eye in the 1940’s. Thus far, some 200 vaults have been built in Burkina Faso, including a church and a mosque, and some two-storey buildings, and over 40 builders have ben trained in the technique.