Archinect - News

Researchers look at the possibilities of wood fly ash by-products as an alternative in rammed earth construction

2024-03-02T08:00:00-05:00

New findings published in the journal Construction and Building Materials from a team of materials researchers working at the University of British Columbia Okanagan's School of Engineering have demonstrated the sustainable qualities of using wood fly ash by-products as alternatives to traditional concrete additives.

The study was undertaken in light of some recent popularity of rammed earth construction in the architectural field, an ancient form of building whose mastery has propelled the 2022 Pritzker Prize winner Diébédo Francis Kéré and several others to prominence parallel with the industry's fight against climate change.

"Everything old is new again and that is precisely why we've been investigating rammed earth construction," Dr. Sumi Siddiqua explained to the UBCO news outlet. "There is an increasing demand for sustainable building products here in Canada and around the world, and materials like fly ash are just the start of a new and important trend."

Siddiqua’s team was...

Conservation expert cautions: Narratives about traditional earthen architecture and the Moroccan earthquake are flawed

2023-09-18T14:37:00-04:00

The rush to blame the destruction that ensued in the wake of this month’s devastating 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Morocco on rammed earth and the region's other traditional earthen construction methods is a flawed conjecture, according to an explanation penned recently by University of York lecturer Louise Cooke.

In an article featured in The Conversation over the weekend, Cooke refuted some of what she calls inaccuracies latent in the popular media narrative about the country’s traditional architectures, namely that their structural designs make them susceptible to collapses during seismic events. She says the popular consensus about traditional architecture is a mischaracterization, adding that the disaster’s true culprit lies in a hastened shift away from age-old building and maintenance methods caused by outside influence from modern Western design.

“In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, it is common for local building cultures to be blamed for their own destruction,” the...

David Adjaye previews his Asaase III earthwork installation for COUNTERPUBLIC in St. Louis

2023-06-02T13:51:00-04:00

It’s very significant. In terms of personal meaning, I have approached it as a kind of meditation and reflection on the idea of deep time—planetary and galaxy time that is beyond the human timeline. Asaase III is, in a way, a representation of how I imagine an ideal city—a city that is in symbiosis with the Earth, acknowledging it and honoring it in a very deep way, but also absolutely transforming it and creating new features.

The new (permanent) addition to the Griot Museum of Black History is Adjaye’s second foray into rammed earth sculpture, following a 2021 installation at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. COUNTERPUBLIC curator Allison Glenn says the commission was born of her desire to connect the museum to the history of land use and the story of architecture in the community — in addition to Adjaye’s previous U.S. museum designs.

Adjaye says he was motivated to use materials as a means of invoking historical reference in light and also breaking us from our lost sense of place in universal spacetime, adding his concern that "Artifice has taken over our sense of reverence for the Earth."

The three-month COUNTERPUBLIC exhibition is on view in St. Louis until July 15th.

In praise of mud

2023-02-20T10:31:00-05:00

The material is essentially free, or at least locally available for a fraction of the cost of concrete...Mud construction contributes little to global warming. And concrete tends to be a gateway, once people can afford it, to another fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning.

Peter Schwartzstein explores the work of folks such as Clara Sawadogo, Francis Kéré and Salima Naji who are trying to rekindle an interest in materials and methods that have a long tradition in Africa and the Middle East.

Adjaye announces new rammed earth commission for The Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis

2022-11-28T12:03:00-05:00

The Griot Museum of Black History will soon be home to a public art installation from the designer of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Architect David Adjaye will design Asaase III, a monument that surrounds the museum. The structure will be built of rammed earth, a process using soil and other natural materials from the St. Louis region to make solid structures.

The rammed earth installation is the new Order of Merit appointee’s second such following his well-profiled commission for Antwaun Sargent’s Social Works show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Adjaye had also incorporated earthwork into his commission for the 2019 Venice Biennale and design for the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library and has referred to it beyond materiality as “another creature” that will join 30 other designs in the three-month public art installation COUNTERPUBLIC, which debuts this Spring.

“Since it’s outdoors and it's intended to be a community of public peace, we really wanted it to be reflective of that,” the museum’s founder Lois Conley said of the deeper inspiration behind the project. “Some of the soils will be coming from various areas that had relevantly large African American populations, whether they exist anymore or not. We still wanted to have some of that material.”

MIT Mextrópoli installation provides a critical exploration into the use of sustainable construction materials

2022-09-28T14:50:00-04:00

A new architectural installation from MIT’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) for the Mextrópoli Architecture and City Festival in Mexico City is leveraging the school’s recent innovations in materials research to weave a narrative about the centuries-old capital through four materials: paper, wood, earth, and concrete.

With the help of collaborating artist Marisa Morán Jahn, faculty members Sarah Williams, Caitlin Mueller, and Rafi Segal worked to create two pavilions for the installation that is meant as an invitation to visitors to explore the city’s history and future potential under the title Sueños con Fiber/Timber, Earth/Concrete.

Image by Future Urban Collectives

Photo by Marisa Morán Jahn

Photo by Walter Shintani

Photo by Rafi Segal

The first pavilion, Fiber/Timber, repurposes the city’s iconic wood Montaña Rusa rollercoaster in a form inspired by the colorful Pre-Columbian art practice called papel picado, which again offers itself as a portal to the ci...

Mud, the world's ancient building material, deserves to have a bright future

2022-07-21T18:23:00-04:00

Even though the buildings in Sana'a are thousands of years old, they remain "terribly contemporary", says Salma Samar Damluji, co-founder of the Daw'an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation in Yemen. Damluji says it is easy to see why these mud buildings have not lost their appeal – they are well-insulated, sustainable and extremely adaptable for modern use. "It is the architecture of the future," says Damluji.

Yemen’s largest city Sana'a may even supplant Franis Kéré's home country as the world’s leading rammed earth capital, with a host of stunning, UNESCO-protected sites scattered around its Old City area. The material is one of many in an arsenal of alternatives being used to combat high temperatures and reduce global carbon footprints, a scant 5% of which can be attributed to all 54 African nations, as the Pritzker Prize winner pointed out last week in a preview of his own locally-sourced designs for the Triennale di Milano.

Earlier on Archinect: Francis Kéré and others are attempting to muddy up the rising use of concrete in West Africa

Elsewhere in the world, the BBC's Future Planet offers Austrian architect Anna Heringer’s Aga Khan Award-winning METI handmade school design in Bangladesh as a contemporary example of its successful export and application. As she and others pointed out, mud's ability to circumvent the need for more air-conditioning on a warming planet is a huge selling...