Dirt cheap

It's only when you look through the hundreds of photos in this large book that you'll realize that building with earth is very environmentally friendly and obviously extremely cost-efficient. Worth saying right away though that this is not a DIY book on how to build a simple house for yourself (the six page bibliography probably has something about that) but rather a comprehensive overview of the history and recent developments in earth-building around the world.

Chapter one (Construction logic) explains how earth buildings have stood for centuries because of fairly simple scientific principles like gravity, electrostatic forces and capillary cohesion, these combined with the load-bearing features of wood enable structures several stories high to stand for years. In chapter three there are photos of the remarkable town of Shiban in central Yemen, entirely earth built with buildings up to five or six stories. A cross-section illustration shows that the walls are much thicker at the base and gradually taper nearer the roof. In Iran the Citadel of Bam, the largest adobe building in the world had stood for centuries until an earthquake in 2003 almost destroyed it. Chapter two provides plenty of historical visual evidence that earth and clay had been used around the world to build large towns.

There is extensive coverage of earth, adobe, wattle and cob for buildings in various parts of the world and in particular, Africa (Egypt, Mali and Morocco have the most entries in the country index) where earth has always been the traditional way to make a house and basically by hand. Many photos show a rough textured uneven finish to all the outside walls and decorative elements in the rooms. In complete contrast, the world's first museum built from earth was opened in Mali in the late 1970s, constructed from rammed earth bricks. Chapter six (Contemporary Creativity) has a selection of housing and civic buildings in various countries, using earth as the basic building unit but now including metal, wood and glass so that the end result looks like a conventional brick structure but much cheaper.

Anyone interested in alternative environmental building solutions will find this a fascinating book. Jean Dethier, the Editor, selected a scientific committee and other experts to check the relevance of the material in the book which is backed up with seven hundred photos (mostly in color) and more than a hundred diagrams. The large images and straightforward presentation all contribute to a worthwhile study of earth architecture.