The January issue of Architectural Review features sub-Saharan architecture in an essay with photographs by James Morris from his new book Butabu.
Books By Paul Graham McHenry
The trilogy of books by New Mexico author, teacher, and builder, Paul Graham McHenry, are a staple to the library of anyone interested in building or designing with earth.
Adobe and Rammed Earth Buildings: Design and Construction
Nader Khalili
Iranian born Nader Khalili, California architect/author is the world renowned Earth Architecture teacher and innovator, and author. He has been a licensed architect in the State of California since 1970, and has practiced both in the U.S. and abroad. Click here to visit Khalili’s website: Cal-Earth, The California Institute for Earth Art and Architecture.
His books, Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own and Racing Alone document his life of searching for a method to fire mud houses and turn them to stone by firing and glazing an entire building after it is constructed from clay-earth on site.
Rural Studio
The book, Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency documents several rammed earth structures designed and built by Auburn School of Architecture students in Hale County, Alabama.
Butabu
Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa by architectural photographer James Morris and Professor of African Art and Architecture at Harvard University, Suzanne Preston Blier, shows the sublime sculptural beauty, variety, ingenuity, and originality of Sahalian Architecture in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso where people have been constructing earthen buildings for centuries.
Earth Homes Handbook
The Handbook for Building Homes of Earth, published by the Peace Corps Information and Collection Exchange, is available on-line with chapters discussing adobe, rammed earth, compressed earth and other relevant technologies and methods.
David Easton
The Rammed Earth House written by David Easton, describes the beauty and grace of rammed earth construction. The photographs of different structures, both modern and ancient, by Cynthia Wright, create a breathtaking glimpse into a building technique that is as old as human history, but exactly suitable for today’s resource-conscious and environmentally friendly building needs. Rammed Earth Works, established in 1978, has distinguished itself as one of the world’s leading company in the research and development of modern earth construction technologies. Founder David Easton is the internationally recognized developer of PISE, Terratile, the Easton forming system for rammed earth and cast elements, and construction systems for engineered earth walls which are code compliant and compatible with current building trades.
South Dakota Rammed Earth
Ralph Patty, Chairman of the Agricultural Engineering Department, supervised the rammed earth research at South Dakota State College in the 1920s and 1930s. Patty’s research was published internationally as well as by SDSC and the USDA Rammed Earth Walls for Buildings- 1926 :Farmers’ Bulletin #1500.
Banco: Adobe Mosques of the Inner Niger Delta
Banco: Adobe Mosques of the Inner Niger Delta by Sebastian Schutyser and Jean Dethier (author of Down to Earth) et al., is a beautiful book with photographs by Sebastian Schutyser that reveal a neglected African architectural heritage: village adobe mosques. His black-and-white images emphasize an artistic fusion of architecture and sculpture and exalt the strength and beauty of a craft that eludes globalization. The photos emphasize the grain and substance of clay smoothed by villagers’ hands or cracked by erosion, and highlight the solidity of the masonry and the sensuality of the textures. The texts that accompany these stunning pictures are by a leading expert on raw-earth architecture and by a major scholar on African vernacular architecture. Included is an appendix that documents all 500 of the principal adobe mosques of the Inner Niger Delta, with the names of the villages and geographical coordinates. For more information visit www.sebastianschutyser.com
Desert Works
Rick Joy: Desert Works contains masterfully modern designs in rammed earth by this Tucson, Arizona based architect. Joy uses color, texture, and materials to turn the six houses shown here into spare and subtle evidence of humanity in a vast natural world. He uses a similar approach, with expanded functionality, in the three studio/office designs that complete this book. The quiet of the settings and the simplicity of Joy’s approach are perfect partners in producing architecture appropriate to a vast, unpeopled place.