The Rebirth of Earth, Daniil Solomou

DANIIL SOLOMOU

Trying to nd the lowest option, for building material, when it comes to embodied energy, you don’t have to look far but just what’s below you, Earth! Mudbricks have been used widely across the globe for centuries as the main building material. For some of the greatest ancient civilizations, Mesopotamia, it was not only used as a housing material but also for megastructures that are still standing centuries after construction. Such as the Taq Kasra which is the largest single span vault of unreinforced brickwork (made from mudbricks) in the world till this day. Truly showing the durability of soil. That got me questioning how can this material that withstands the test of time can be adapted to the modern world and practices. First, what is a mudbrick? It's a rectangular mold-made brick made from earth, chopped straw, and water, a common building practice in a lot of vernacular architecture around the world.

Taq Kara

The more modern reiteration of working with soil in architecture in rammed earth. Rammed earth is created by compacting subsoil material, unbaked earthen construction unlike mudbricks, in temporary formwork. Compacting multiple layers of soil can create a high aesthetic appeal, more important than that is its extremely low embodied energy, great hygroscopic humidity regulation and natural insulation. All this can be built on-site with soil found on-site or from other constructions excavation waste. Some alterations of rammed earth are factory prefabricated walls and stabilized rammed earth, which is a mixture of rammed earth with concrete.

Hassan Fathy, New Baris, 1967 Nk’Mip Dessert Cultural Center

Concrete, which is the main material nowadays in the construction industry, contributes about 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. If the entirety of the cement industry was combined into a country, it would be the third largest emitter, behind China and the US. The industry contributes more CO2 than aviation fuel and its not far from the global agriculture industry (12%). But this is not slowing down, the cement industry quadrupled since the 1990s and likely to increase even more in the future if we won’t nd a new way of building.

So, is it worth it to start building with earth? I would strongly argue that yes, it is worth it! Rammed earth or mudbricks don’t only drastically cutdown the embodied energy of a building, but also upcycle other industries waste. Using soil from other industries and construction sites that would otherwise consider it as waste. A great example is a project by Joly & Loiret in Paris by the name “Manufacture Sur Seine – Réinventer la terre”, reinventing the earth. The idea is to create a large multi-purpose urban estate that will be made from rammed earth. The soil used will be the one extracted from the Paris metropolis during the new digging of the metropolitan rail network. This led of earth building is slowly picking up again, now that the climate crisis is accelerating. Now that this practice is reawaking it will soon ourish again in urban areas. As in the words of sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin “the great movements of transformation always start in a marginal, deviant, modest or even invisible way”.

Joly & Loiret, Manufacture Sur Seine – Réinventer la terre