Asia – Page 8 – EARTH ARCHITECTURE

March 4, 2004

Split House

Located in the mountains of northern Beijing by the Great Wall, the Split House is designed by perhaps China’s most internationally acclaimed architect, Yung Ho Chang of Beijing’s first private architecture practice, Atelier Feichang Jianzhu. The house is split in the middle to bring in the scenery. A courtyard, or outdoor living area, is enclosed by the mountains on one side and the house, with its two split halves, on the other. The line between the natural landscape and manmade architecture is thus blurred. The angle between the two halves can be adjusted to fit the house onto various hill sites. The structure is made of laminated wood with rammed earth walls, which is well insulated with minimum environmental impact.

February 10, 2004

Arup Engineers Mud Brick

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Architecture Week reports that since 1997, engineers and architects from Arup and Arup Associates in London have been working with the Ladakhi Buddhist community, in Ladakh, India, and the United Kingdom-based charity, the Drupka Trust, to design and build a self-sustaining community using a combination of traditional and modern building methods and materials.

February 10, 2004

Laurie Baker

Laurie Baker’s architectural career began as a student at Birmingham University. However, his blossoming professional practice, only a year old, was cut short when World War II erupted in Europe. As a conscientious objector, Baker enlisted in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and served as a medical technician in China and Burma. Read more in the essay, Of Mud and Men: Architecture as a Political Act

December 23, 2003

«atalhˆyuk Video

Local workers make mud bricks, dry them in the sun, and shape them into the walls of the experimental neolithic house. Watch the streaming video. The video is part of an archeological study of «atalhˆyuk, a Neolithic town from 9,000 years ago, located in modern-day Turkey. «atalhˆyuk means ‘forked mound’ and refers to the site’s east and west mounds, which formed as centuries of townspeople tore down and rebuilt the settlement’s mud-brick houses. No one knows what the townspeople called their home 9,000 years ago.

October 31, 2003

The Gaiapolis Foundation

The Gaiapolis Foundation, in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a non-profit non-government organization who address the investigation, dissemination, and application of different earthen building technologies (adobe, rammed earth and cob) for the construction of social housing.

October 12, 2003March 17, 2026

Drying Mud Bricks

Sun dried mud bricks, called “Khesht” in Iran, are laid on their side to promote even drying. The patterns created in a landscape of mudbricks can also be considered as an aesthetic part of the process of building with earth. These bricks are being prepared for the restoration of the Naren Rampart in Yzad, Iran. Image by Dr. Hossein Massoud, 2001

August 23, 2003March 17, 2026

Chinese Hakka Architecture

Regarded by architects as the cream of Chinese traditional residential architecture, tulou, or earth buildings, first appeared about 1,200 years ago, and were mostly completed in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. They were built and inhabited by the Hakka people – a group belonging to the Han family who can trace their ancestors back more than 1,500 years to central and north China. During the hundreds of years of migration, the Hakka people tried to maintain their own culture and way of life, keeping their own unique dialect, custom and cuisine. They built the earth complexes to guard against invasion from local bandits and to protect their children from the influence of local communities. All the families of a Hakka clan lived together in an enclosed rammed earth building.

March 13, 2003

Filipino Adobe

Photo of four people posing infront of a Spanish Colonial era adobe Paoay Church in Ilocos Norte, Philippines. c.1910.