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Terra Europae
Timber-framed houses, formerly filled with wattle and daub, now with current materials: bricks or cellular concrete, Alsace, France. (photo from Terra Incognita. Discovering/Preserving European earthen architecture, Argumentum/Culture Lab Editions, 2008)
and housing for the peoples of this region and similarly in the rest of Europe. In England, where traditional architecture employed cob and half-timber framing, rammed earth arrived in the late 18th century but was quickly abandoned. The technique was used earlier in Great Britain under the Roman occupation (1st-5th centuries AD), with archaeological evidence interpreted in London and St Albans (Verulamium). The years 1920 to 1960 were for France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, years of study and valorisation of vernacular architecture that contributed to knowledge and later to the revival of earthen architecture. In England, C. William-Ellis (1919), proposed a first monograph on cottages in cob, mud, chalk and clay, further developed by J. Eastwick-Field, in 1947. In Ireland, folk-
lorist C. Ă Danachair, published in 1957, a study on traditional Irish construction techniques (JRSAI, 87, BĂ©aloideas, 25). In 1942, the MusĂ©e National des Arts et Traditions Populaires launched its (worksite) Chantier 1925 for the study of French rural architecture. Beyond research, some of these countries recommended or implemented the use of earthen material. In England, in the 1920s, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries supported the construction of earthen cottages for returning soldiers from World War I. In France, in 1941, the architect Le Corbusier designed his Maisons Murondins, in compressed earth block and rammed earth. In 1942, in Ireland, an (unsuccessful) proposal was made ââto the State to encourage the use of earth in construction, because of its widespread availability, low cost, strength and authenticity. After World War II, France and Britain, faced with shortages of industrial materials and the need to relocate affected populations en masse, experienced a brief revival in earthen construction. In France, the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism supported research on stabilized earthen concrete