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Prof. Dr. Gernot Minke is a professor at Universitat Kassel, where he leads the Forschungslabor fur Experimentelles Bauen. He has long concerned himself with developments in earth building, and he has dealt with the building material clay in theory and practice since 1977. Visit his website.

El I SEMIN¡RIO – Arquitetura e Construção com Terra no Brasil e IV SEMIN¡RIO – Arquitectura de Terra em Portugal (The 1st Brasilian Confrence of Architecture and Construction in Earth and the 4th Conference of Earth Architecture in Portugal) will be held the 4th – 8th of November, 2006 in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Download conference information here (pdf).

The Hassan Fathy Web Site has a new URL:

http://www.geocities.com/arc.hassanfathy/

“Dirt is also an intrinsically architectural material. Both architecture and grime are by-products of the grinding wheels of civilisation. Architecture’s unnatural and artificial environments help define what dirt is.”

read more from contemporary-magazine.com

Diébédo Francis Kéré, an architecture student in Berlin, took upon himself the cause of ensuring that his village would not be deprived of a school, and with a group of friends in Germany, Kéré set up a fund-raising association, Schulbausteine fur Gando (Bricks for the Gando School). The idea met with a positive response and, having secured finance through the association, Kéré also obtained the support of LOCOMAT (a government agency in Burkina Faso) to train brickmakers in the technique of working with compressed stabilized earth. The project is a recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Ninth Award Cycle, 2002 – 2004.

YBE2004 Houses of the Future is the showcase event for the Year of the Built Environment which challenged Australians to consider the future of our built environment and the most tangible element of that environment – the house. The Clay House uses the twin concepts of a courtyard plan and the inherent mass of clay brick products to create an intimate and private house. The driving concept behind this design is that it can fit into a small block, and has high level of thermal comfort that doesn’t rely on artificial cooling and heating.

The scene: a humble clay house on one of Baghdad’s meanest streets. A knock at the door. When the man of the house answers, he is astonished. “We have presents for you!” warbles Shaima Emad Zubair, a young siren with tangerine lipstick. Batting her blue-mascaraed eyes, she pokes her microphone his way. “Labor and Materials” is Iraq’s answer to “Extreme Home Makeover” and the country’s first reality TV show. In 15-minute episodes, broken windows are made whole again. Blasted walls slowly rise again.

The Residence at Meteor Vineyards in Napa Valley, California contains a guest house constructed of rammed earth that is comprised of a V-shaped roof floating above the massive walls. Read more.

Play the Adobe Building Game.

Within the Institute of Archaeology at the University College London there are a number of projects concerned with the archaeology, conservation and study of earthen architecture. Their web page details the interests, projects and people involved in this small research group.