Earth

Matter and surface

Earth

Ancestralmud · wattle and daub · rammed earth · tierra (Spanish)

housingschoolcommunity centertemple

It is clayey soil used for building. Adobe is sun-dried blocks, rammed earth is soil compacted in molds and bahareque is mud on a woven frame of cane or timber.

Solves

What it solves

It regulates indoor humidity and temperature and uses almost no energy to produce. In seismic zones bahareque and reinforced earth perform better than solid adobe.

Today

Protect earth with good boots and a good hat, that is, a stone or concrete plinth and wide eaves. In seismic zones use reinforced systems such as bahareque with a timber or bamboo frame.

Common mistake

Building solid adobe walls without reinforcement in a seismic zone or leaving them exposed to the rain.

Tomorrow

Bahareque and compressed earth block workshops can bring the craft back to local crews working with soil from the site itself. Earth stabilized with a little cement gives cool, low-footprint walls.

Fact The Great Mosque of Djenné has been a World Heritage Site since 1988, and its projecting palm bundles serve as permanent scaffolding for the annual replastering.

Where it comes from

  • 1Yangshao and Longshan cultures China, since around 5000 BC
    Walls and foundations of rammed earth, the technique called tapia in Spanish.
  • 2Great Mosque of Djenné Mali, current building from 1907
    The largest mud-brick building in the world is repaired every year with the work of the whole community.
  • 3Indigenous peoples of the Americas Caribbean and tropical America, pre-Columbian
    Bahareque of woven poles or canes covered with mud, a name with Caribbean Taíno roots.
  • 4Adobe house of the Central Valley Costa Rica, colonial period to 1910
    Adobe dominated the cities until it was banned around 1910 after the Cartago earthquake.

Masters

  • Hassan Fathy New Gourna, Luxor, Egypt, 1948
    He built an adobe village with courtyards and domes made with local earth and with the people. He showed that mud serves for decent, affordable housing in a hot climate.
  • Anna Heringer METI School, Rudrapur, Bangladesh, 2005
    She built the school with walls of mud and straw and a bamboo upper floor together with local craftspeople. It proves that earth can be modern, cool and handmade.
Sources

See also

Also in Matter and surface

Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.