University of Bath

I’m currently on a Sabattical at the Univeristy of Bath, as the Sir Edmund Happold Senior Visting Research Fellow.

I am looking at a number of aspects of earth building, mainly related to how the material can be used by the mainstream construction industry.

Hill Holt Wood

Hill Holt Wood.

Karen and Nigel Lowthrop bought the Hill Holt Wood in 1995 and over the next 10 years they managed the wood turning it from a woodland in decline to one in recovery and set up an award winning social enterprise to provide education and training to disadvantage young people. In 2002 they secured planning permission and started construction of their home in the wood.

Part of the build is a rammed earth Eco-house, looks great!

Earth Dwell Ltd.

Earth Dwell Ltd..

Earth Dwell Ltd. specializes in the design and construction of stabilized-insulated rammed earth.

Run by Bly Windstorm from Washington State, who has 15 years’ building experience and is a founder member of NAREBA.

NAREBA : North American Rammed Earth Builders Association

NAREBA’s mission is to promote the use of Rammed Earth as a building material and method. We strive for the free flow of information among members, to be a center for reliable information for interested professionals and the general public, establish a comprehensive research and development program, define and enforce high building standards, and teach rammed earth building methods.

NAREBA is a not-for-profit entity which offers the opportunity for its members to share in the passion for working with earthen materials and to contribute to the advancement of rammed earth construction.

NAREBA builders share a resource base of over 150 years of collective building experience and have committed to building RE walls with the highest standards in the industry.

Forum on Hakka Tulous

Forum on Hakka Tulous: Lessons to Be Learned, Past, Present and Future
+Launch of the International Hakka Tulou Alliance (IHTA)

Time: June 24, 2009, 2:30 -6:00 PM Place: Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Organized by
Constructed Facilities Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
ASH-Autonomous & Sustainable Housing Inc, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

This forum will serve to demonstrate how the sustainability of Hakka village architecture built hundreds of years ago and still in partial use today, bridge the past, present and future, with exemplary lessons for our modern world. This forum will also serve as the official launch of the International Hakka Tulou Alliance to help save, preserve and revitalize Hakka Villages for our common world heritage and a more sustainable future of planet earth.

For more information, please contact and register with : Ruifeng Liang, rliang@mail.wvu.edu, (304) 293 2111 x 2623,
Jorg Ostrowski, jdo@ecobuildings.net, (403) 239 1882, Ying Lei, ylei@xmu.edu.cn

Forum_on_Hakka_Tulous

Rammed earth and Sandcastles

There has been lots of press coverage about a paper we’ve just released.

We showed that there is the same science can be used to explain sandcastles as rammed earth, and indeed all the mud bricks in the world.

Just a few of the sites which picked up the story

BBC news website

New Civil Engineer

Daily Telegraph

Building

Green Building

Earth Building Conference Portugal

http://www.esg.pt/6atp/

http://www.uc.pt/uid/cea/6atp

Historic city of Kasgar to be destroyed

The historic city of Kashgar is going to be pulled down and replaced by concrete.

The Chinese government is to demolish 85% of the historic Old city, with the remaining 15% left as a cultural musuem.  Kashgar is the best preserved Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia  (George Michell – Kashgar: Oasis City on China’s Old Silk Road). Many of the 13,000 UIghur  families will be moved, and in place of the Old city, and New Old City will be built with reproduction of ancient Islamic architecture “to preserve the Uighur culture”.

The demolition is said to be urgent because of the earthquake risk, with Chinese officals arguing that it is protecting its citizens from natural disasters.

I would dispute this point, and it would appear the locals take the same view:

Locals scoff at the claims about safety, saying that the damage to the local housing had been minimal in recent earthquakes and that these old structures had fared better than modern ones.

“There was an earthquake in 2004, but none of the houses in the Old City collapsed,” the businessman said. “People in the Old City believe that the old houses are stronger than modern buildings being built. They’ve survived for hundred of years.” Ronald Knapp, a professor emeritus at State University of New York, said there had been some loss of life from cave-ins of adobe structures over the centuries, but Sichuan’s problems seemed to have resulted “more from very poor ‘modern’ construction rather than the shortcomings of traditional practices”.

Uyghur Human Right project article

There is some seismic resistance in these mud brick buildings, and failures in earthquakes come from poor quality modern construction, rather than historic structures. A fine example of this was the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

This is a very sad state of affairs, and the buildings should at least be documented before they are pulled down.

Thanks to Ronald Rael of Earth Architecture

New York Times Article

New York Times Slideshow

Uyghur Human Rights Project Article

Repair work at Holy Cross, South Carolina

The Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg,  South Carolina is an important landmark in US rammed earth history.

Dr William Anderson built a small rammed earth dairy in 1821, and quarters for his servants in 1823. Pleased with the results, Anderson built the Chuch in 1850.

The Church was investigated by Thomas Miller in 1926 because of ongoing problems with its structure and I believe some repairs were carried out. The building has problems with termites and the church is currently sueing two termite removal companies.

Repairs to the building are been carried out by Mashburn Construction Co. Inc., and will cost close to $2 million.
They are not allowing any water near the rammed earth walls, so repairs are being carried out in small sections, such that the roof can be replaced every day.

This is an exciting project, and I’m really interested to find out how it goes.

The Item article (with photo gallery)

Rebuilding with Mud in Gaza

Jihad el-Shaar has decided to rebuild his home in adobe, rather than cement, because of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Since January, only two trucks carrying construction material have been allowed into the Gaza Strip.

I think this is a fine way to build a house, and there are many advantages of earth houses over cement. If more NGOs were open to the possibility of building with adobe, we would be able to develop excellent adobe houses for Gaza. In New Mexico, adobe houses are popular, seen now as a Green building material (Adobe Builder)

Lots more photographs at In Gaza blog.

Thanks to Tom Morton of Arc Architects and Ronald Rael of Earth Architecture who also picked this up.