EARTH ARCHITECTURE

EARTH ARCHITECTURE

EARTH ARCHITECTURE

It is estimated that between a third and a half of the world’s population—approximately three billion people on six continents— lives in buildings constructed of earth. The typologies of earthen architecture, however, extend beyond buildings for living, and include structures for working and worshiping, as well as the countless forms of earthen architecture that are not inhabited by humans, such as agricultural buildings, city walls, and monuments. In India there are estimated to be as many as 80 million dwellings made of earth, 1 and in China the number of people living in earthen homes is estimated to be 100 million. In France 15 percent of rural buildings are made of rammed earth, and the United States is the leading consumer of mud bricks in the industrialized world. 3 2 This makes the ground we walk on and cultivate our crops in the most widely used building material on the planet—that’s right, dirt. This does not include, nor should be confused with, other materials that come from the ground, such as stone, cement, or metals derived from ore. Earth, by this definition, is simply clay, gravel, sand, silt, or other friable soils, in which organic materials sometimes exist. Because of the ubiquitous availability of appropriate soil, buildings constructed of earth can also be found just about everywhere—in almost every terrestrial biome on the planet.

RONALD RAEL