Our Earthen Architectural Heritage: Materials Research and Conservation
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Our Earthen
Architectural Heritage: Materials Research and Conservation
Hugo Houben, Alejandro Alva Balderrama, and Stefan Simon Abstract Earth construction is the oldest and most universal architectural expression on our planet. The most ancient human settlements were built with raw earth, and even today at least 30% of the world’s population still lives in earthen homes. The conservation of earthen architecture depends of two aspects of a global strategy. One part involves intervention to preserve existing structures, and the second involves continuing to use the construction methods and materials in contemporary and future building practices. Traditionally, earth construction has been approached in an empirical way. Only recently have those involved in the field felt it necessary to develop a specific materials research attitude. This has resulted in major technological progress over the last 20 years. The wide range of building systems emphasizes the technological diversity of earth construction. This article presents a historical perspective, along with a review of the characteristics of earth as a building material, stabilization processes, and construction methods, and a report on an ongoing research program aimed at identifying and characterizing the fundamental binding mechanisms responsible for cohesion properties in earthen construction. Keywords: adobe, compressed earth blocks, construction materials, rammed earth, raw earth, soil stabilization.
Raw Earth Construction: A Major Building Technique The global importance—both in quantity and quality—of unbaked raw earth construction is not well known in most of the developed world. With its origins in prehistory and its association with the first civilizations of the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Huang He, unbaked earth construction is widely considered outdated as a primary building technique, despite the fact that it continues to leave a undeniable and distinctive imprint on the architectural landscape, both rural and urban, of numerous countries. On the contrary, raw earth remains to this
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day one of the main materials used by humans to erect their homes and city buildings. Although the passage of the centuries has covered many sites of human occupation, it has not effaced the skillful use of this material, arising from a body of knowledge refined over the course of time, to construct simple huts and modest homes, farm buildings and factories, grand houses and palaces, castles and defensive walls, aqueducts, religious edifices, pyramids, villages, small towns, urban blocks, cities, and entire kingdoms. According to UNESCO, 17% of the places on its World Cultural
Heritage list are earthen architectural sites.1 Earthen structures house some 30% of the world’s population. In developing countries, 50% of the rural population and 20% of the urban population live in such structures—60% of the housing in Peru and more than 70% in India is made up of earthen structures. In France, at least one million earthen buildings are still in
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