Completed in 1981, Maisons en Terre by architects Francoise Jourda and Gilles Perraudin was one of many projects for earth housing built in the earth village of the Isle of Abeau.
Rammed Chalk: Pines Calyx
The Pines Calyx conference and training centre, an environmentally-friendly building made of chalk extracted from the White Cliffs, at St Margaret’s Bay in Kent, is said to be one of Europe’s “most sustainable and healthy” structures. [ photo set | press ]
Building With Earth: Design & Technology
The new book, Building With Earth: Design & Technology, by Prof. Dr. Gernot Minke offers a comprehensive overview of the many uses of and techniques for processing clay. Drawings and photographs of twenty structures offer specific and inspiring examples of clay architecture from around the world.
Centre for Alternative Technology
Commissioned by the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), structural engineer Toby Hodsdon of Buro Happold will build a 200-seat auditorium with rammed earth walls 7.2m high – the highest in the UK.
Earth Architecture in Portugal – Two New Publications
With the participation of 54 authors, the book Earth Architecture in Portugal is an assembly of essays and work by professionals with expertise on the topics of architecture and construction with earth. Topics include technology, materials, history, anthropology, conservation and particular attention is given to the contemporary architecture constructed of earth in the two last decades in Portugal. Publication is in English and Portuguese, 23 x 32 cm Hard Layer – 300 pages.
Terra em Seminário contains 70 essays presented in IV SIACOT and III SEMIN¡RIO OF EARTH ARCHITECTURE IN PORTUGAL. The publication offers a perspective on the current state of earthen architecture in an international context.
For purchase information contact www.centrodaterra.org or by emailing info@centrodaterra.org
The 5th International Photo Contest on Earth Architecture
The 5th International Photo Contest on “Earth Architectures: architectures landscapes” is an initiative of Casalincontrada (Ch) Documentation Centre on Earth Architectures. The “rediscovery” of the knowledge linked to raw earth architecture recomposed in images, like tiles of a mosaic made of people, things, material and places. Images that can be of “surviving structures” but also “new scenarios”, architectures of the territory, memories and situations. Entry deadline: June 30, 2006
Earthen Architecture Association
The Earthen Architecture Association, headquartered in the Czech Republic, is an organization whose members are interested in Earthen Architecture and natural materials, promotes use of clay in new buildings and protection and preservation of existing clay houses as a part of our cultural heritage.
Building with Earth Conference
Building with Raw Earth Today: International Conference on the Preservation, Promotion and Protection of Earth Architecture. December 9-10, 2005. Download conference schedule [Italian Language]
Node 1 and Contour Crafting
“Node 1” is a conceptual architecture project by French Architect François Roche which lacks most of the usual architectural accoutrements: blueprints, material suppliers, subcontractors. Instead, Roche imagines a programmable assembly device dubbed the “viab,” a construction robot capable of improvising as it assembles walls, ducts, cables, and pipes. A viab would produce structures that are not set and specific, but impermanent and malleable – merely viable – made of a uniform, recyclable substance like adobe.
The closest thing to a viab today is a modest mud-working robot, called “contour crafter”, invented by Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California. Two years ago, California-based architect Greg Lynn was talking to Khoshnevis about the same topic. [ 1 | 2 | 3 ]
Rammed Earth: Design and Construction Guidelines
Rammed Earth: Design and Construction Guidelines 