Architecture, Art, Design, and Culture using of mud, clay, soil, dirt & dust.
“Earthen Architecture in the Northern United States: European Traditions in Earthen Construction” by Richard Pieper
“In the United States, the use of earth for building is most frequently associated with Hispano-American traditions of adobe construction in the Southwest. There is also, however, in the northern United States a significant tradition of earthen wall construction that is related to techniques of northern European immigrants.”
The “Earth House,” as this newly opened museum in the Western Bekaa is called, is sponsored by the National Heritage Foundation, the museum, inaugurated on Friday, aims to revive the traditional house style of the rural Bekaa region of Lebanon.
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A VULNERABLE BEAUTY: the earthen architecture of Iran was shown at the RIAS Gallery in Edinburgh this spring. For those who missed it, download the .PDF
In Situ was established in 1998 by Rowland Keable.
Built By Hand by Eiko Komatsu, Athena Steen and Bill Steen is, according to Michael Webb, the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine,” A photographic anthology of the astounding variety of architecture produced without architects-a colorful successor to Bernard Rudofsky’s pioneering study of vernacular building, Architecture Without Architects. The book contains an entire section dedicated to earth architecture.
Chitra Vishwanath is an architect in Bangalore, India that has been buillding interesting works of architecture with mud for the past 20 years.
The Dutch web site, http://leem.pagina.nl/ has a number of links to earthen projects.
The Paquime ruins, located near Nuevo Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, is a archeological, sculptural and architectural wonder. Paquime emerged from shadowy origins early in the thirteenth century. It became the largest and most culturally complex settlement in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Much like the Hohokam to the north and west, the Paquime people began building rectangular walled surface structures next to their pithouse lodges late in the first millennium.
Several websites offer a look at the Egyptian Architect Hassan Fathy:
Hassan Fathy and the New Gourna Experiment
Hassan Fathy: The Barefoot Architect.
In the upper-middle-class Ahwatukee section of Phoenix plenty of folks play the status game called keeping up with the Joneses. But few can come close to duplicating the home of one of their neighbors, a real “Jones” named Eddie [of Jones Studio]. The house is distinctive, an experiment in take-a-chance architecture that combines rammed-earth walls with large expanses of glass.