EARTH ARCHITECTURE – Page 47 – Architecture, Art, Design, and Culture using of mud, clay, soil, dirt & dust.

September 20, 2006

Rammed Earth in Spain Videos

Via google video, videographer Paul Jaquin has ammassed a collection of videos of rammed earth in spain. Read synopsis and watch the videos by clicking below:

Rammed earth at Lorca castle, a tour of the outside of the building, and a view across the valley.

Rammed earth wall at Palma del Rio in southern Spain. Constructed around 1171, and probably 6m high.

Conclusive proof that some rammed earth is absolutely fine in the rain. Here a castle at Alcala de Guadaira is observed in the middle of a rainstrorm with no detrimental effect to the fabric of the wall.

A video tour of Banos de la Encina castle, built in 967 from rammed earth.

Rammed earth wall at Novelda in southern Spain. This is a view inside a hole in the wall, proving that rammed earth can provide some arching or tensile action. Novelda castle was built around 1171 duringthe Almohad dynasty in Spain.

A tour of the inside of Villena castle in southern Spain. Constructed in rammed earth in 1172, it is a very well preserved rammed earth castle.

Rammed earth wall in Cordoba.

September 15, 2006

Atelier FCJZ

Yung Ho Chang, founder of Atelier FCJZ, the first private architectural firm in China, has been part of China’s tremendous transformation. One of Chang’s most notable works is his Split House, completed in 2002. Chang’s sensibility to materials fuses the traditional with modern design by using rammed earth, an ancient method for building.

September 8, 2006

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.

September 5, 2006

The Valeria P. Cirrel House

The Valeria P. Cirrel House was designed by Italian-born architect Lina Bardi and 1958 near Sao Paulo, Brazil. The adobe residence employed folk elements “highly unusual in the modernist vocabulary of the time” according to When Brazil Was Modern: A Guide to Architecture, 1928-1960.

September 5, 2006

Vitruvius on Adobe

In the only architectural treatise surviving from Classical Antiquity, Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture refers in some detail to adobe, describing suitable earth and suggesting that adobes should be made in the spring and left for at least two years to dry. He mentions that building by-laws in Utica (near Carhage) specify that only adobes of five years old be used for building, to be so certified by the aedile (magistrate).

September 5, 2006

Oldest Mud Brick Structure in the World

The ceremonial enclosure of Khasekhemwy–Hierakonpolis’ only standing monument is built entirely of sun-dried mud brick, with walls 5 meters (16.4 feet) thick and still preserved in places to its original imposing height of 9 meters (29.5 feet). It is the oldest freestanding mud-brick structure in the world. For the third time, it has been listed with the World Monument Fund as one of the world’s 100 most endangered monuments. Decorated on its exterior with a pattern of recessed paneling or niches and originally plastered white, it must have been a striking sight in its time. Almost 5,000 years later, it stands as a testament to the abilities of its builder, King Khasekhemwy, the last ruler of the Second Dynasty (ca. 2686 B.C.), but the reasons for which it was built remain a mystery.

September 4, 2006

Kerry Hill

Singapore-based Australian Kerry Hill is regarded as one of the best regional architects utilising natural rammed earth, timber and stone that exude an almost monastic ambience. Built on the banks of WA’s Margaret River, Hill’s Ooi house (above) is a single-storey, three bedroom holiday residence with a guest chalet intended to be the first of several.

September 2, 2006

Cob Building in Europe

The Cotentin and Bessin Marshlands Regional Nature Park in France proposes to
create one moment of exchanges on cob building. A conference entitled “Cob
Building in Europe” is scheduled for the 12, 13 and 14th of October 2006, in
Isigny-sur-mer, Normandy, France. Download conference the program here

August 30, 2006

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.

August 29, 2006

Poeh Center

The Poeh Center Museum Building is the tallest adobe building in New Mexico. The four story tower was completed in 1996.