Image © Alejandro Jaime
Rammed earth, mud bricks, compressed earth & cob construction are all widely used earth friendly building techniques that are centuries old. They all use earth as their main building material. Earth is abundant & cheap and has the potential to be a building material for the future. It makes perfect sense, out of all the natural resources in the world, earth is second only to water in terms of its abundance (it comes at a premium unfortunately).
This is something that ancient cultures along the Peruvian coast knew all too well and the temple of Pachacamac is a perfect example of architectural ingenuity. The temple of Pachacamac is an archaeological site 40 km southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. Most of the common buildings and temples were built by c. 800-1450 CE and use mud almost in its entirety as their main building material
Unfortunately, in today’s world, earth is a resource that is taken a bit for granted and believed to be valuable mostly as a place to stand and not necessarily as a place to nurture. Watching these images I can’t help but think that maybe mud and earth buildings do have a future in modern green architecture.
‘Because of it’s great thermal properties and its wide abundance, earth as a modern building material could become a major sustainable solution for the housing market.’
For now, we can only admire what ancient peruvian architects achieved with only the most basic materials and we are left to wonder, have we really evolved?
Images © Alejandro Jaime
