Working with NASA as part of an initiative to design homes fit for space, Iranian architect Nader Khalili conceived the dome home, pictured above, as an affordable, accessible, easy to build, and environmentally sensible housing solution. This works in dry desert climates such as Iran, Israel, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority.

Nader first presented his Superadobe construction method, which involves stuffing bags full of readily available dirt and then stacking them in a circular form. The bags are held together with barbed wire, and then covered with lime plaster. Any holes are filled in with grout.

The resulting homes are so well-insulated, no air-conditioning is necessary in summer, and in winter, the thick walls retain enough heat to keep the interior space comfortably warm

In 1991, Khalili founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), which continues to provide workshops and empower people around the world with these low impact structures.

Related: Nader-Khalili inspired eco resort in Oman wins big accolades from WAF

For SharmsArd, a Palestinian firm that Ahmad Daoud commissioned to build his home in Jericho, building with Earth was an obvious choice that allows them to feel empowered in the context of the nation’s ongoing struggle towards a peaceful unification with their neighbours.

One of the firm’s partners, Danna Massad, expresses their collective desire to operate independently of the foreign aid that so many Palestinians have to rely on to make any kind of respectable living in Palestine.

“I think the Palestinian society is oversaturated with international aid,” she told NPR’s Emily Harris several years back.

“Of course, we’re not the only example of a local business that refuses any kind of aid, but we can see how excited people get … to see how you can actually do something without being dependent.”

Despite some skepticism from his community, Daoud is chuffed with his new home. “It’s an environmentally friendly house,” he told NPR. “I can tear it down and nothing will remain. In the summer, I don’t need air conditioning, and in the winter, I don’t need heat.”

More photos of Super Adobe in Jericho:

Photos of the construction process taken from SharmsArd Facebook Page.

:: NPR

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Working with NASA as part of an initiative to design homes fit for space, Iranian architect Nader Khalili conceived the dome home as an affordable, accessible, easy to build, and environmentally sensible housing solution. Now it’s being applied in the West Bank.

One of our close friends apprenticed with Nader Khalili in California. Fleeing Iran, he first presented his Superadobe construction method, which involves stuffing bags full of readily available dirt and then stacking them in a circular form. The bags are held together with barbed wire, and then covered with lime plaster. Any holes are filled in with grout.

The resulting homes are so well-insulated, no air-conditioning is necessary in summer, and in winter, the thick walls retain enough heat to keep the interior space comfortably warm. Much like strawbale homes, pioneered by Bill and Athena Steen in Canelo, Arizona. We visited them in the early 2000s. Read the story of Canelo here.

In 1991, Khalili founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), which continues to provide workshops and empower people around the world with these low impact structures. Superadobe technology, a kind of low-tech technology, was designed and developed by architect Nader Khalili and Cal-Earth Institute, and engineered by P.J. Vittore.

Related: Nader-Khalili resort in Oman wins big accolades

For SharmsArd, the young Palestinian firm that Ahmad Daoud commissioned to build his home in Jericho, building with Earth was an obvious choice that allows them to feel empowered in the context of the nation’s ongoing struggle against Israel’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the West Bank and Gaza.

One of the firm’s partners, Danna Massad, expresses their collective desire to operate independently of the foreign aid that so many Palestinians have to rely on to make any kind of respectable living in Palestine. I think the Palestinian society is oversaturated with international aid,” she tells NPR’s Emily Harris.
“Of course, we’re not the only example of a local business that refuses any kind of aid, but we can see how excited people get … to see how you can actually do something without being dependent.”

Despite some skepticism from his community, Daoud is chuffed with his new home.

“It’s an environmentally friendly house,” he told NPR. “I can tear it down and nothing will remain. In the summer, I don’t need air conditioning, and in the winter, I don’t need heat.”

Photos of the construction process taken from SharmsArd Facebook Page which has not been updated since 2020. As of October, 2023 their website page has not been working. 

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The Berbers were once renowned for their architecture. Having thrived in harsh desert conditions, they knew all about water management, passive solar design, and insulated earth construction.

But modern interventions and globalization have rendered their culture somewhat obsolete and Salima Naji sought to reverse that unfortunate trend.

Not only did she restore two important sites at Agadir of Amtoudi, but she also oversaw the rehabilitation of Qsar Assa and rescued sections of Agadir Ouzrou.

The beautiful stone and earth buildings won’t necessarily resume their former function as warehouses for grain. Instead, they have been revived to honor their former cultural and spiritual significance, and to provide a space for Berbers to reawaken their rich and colorful heritage.

Village squares, public walkways and outdoor theaters have been added to the sites where poetry contents, feasts, and song and dance festivals are held, creating a whole new sense of pride.   

Naji is one of 20 nominees for the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture – a prestigious prize awarded every three years that comes with some serious financial rewards.

While other North African and Middle Eastern countries have watched important historical sites destroyed in the turbulent aftermath of the Arab Spring, Morocco has undertaken a host of preservation projects – including the restoration of synagogues throughout the nation mandated by the King.

The post Ancient Moroccan Granaries Revived as Thriving Civic Centers appeared first on Green Prophet.

Refrigeration is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of modern man, but it has come at a price. Not only do they require a great deal of energy to stay cool, but they also rely on ozone-depleting chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs), or freon, though some countries have phased these out.

As an increasing number of people walk away from the grid to build their homes and villages and seek more sustainable lifestyles, yet keeping food cool and having ice for summer beverages remains one of the most significant challenges. Of course there are root cellars but they can’t keep cooked food cool enough for a few days. For meat hunted in the fall, you have to cure it or find a freezer on the grid. For a potential solution, we look to the Iranians and their ancient domed ice houses.

Used up until about 50 years ago, these ancient ice houses were typically constructed as domes with earth bricks. Others are walled and some contain underground chambers.

Built on the outskirts of desert areas where it’s almost impossible to get ice unless its trucked in from the far north, the ice houses were built with channels at the back.

In winter, these channels were then flooded with water, which was likely derived from the Iranians’ qanat irrigation system that funnelled runoff from mountains to areas at their base, according to Dr. Hemming Jorgensen, who has compiled the first extensive documentation of these structures.

Overnight the water would freeze and custodians of the ice house would wake up early the following day, before sunrise, and break up blocks of ice that they would then relocate to the ice houses.

They would do this for as many nights as necessary to ensure a sufficient supply of ice that would last through the summer.

Jorgensen has documented the existence of 129 such ice houses, which Amusing Planet says are much bigger than similar ice houses built in the United States.

However, remnants of only 104 remain, and Jorgensen expresses concern that the absence of concerted preservation projects could result in their destruction.

Already some of them have been transformed into informal trash dumps. According to Jorgensen, “The traditional Persian ice houses were built at villages on the perimeter of the large deserts on the Central Plateau. Their cone-shaped domes, up to 20 meters high, consisted of mud and mud bricks from the excavation of the deep ice pits protected by the domes.

“The ice houses served as reservoirs that stored blocks of ice in the winter for further use in the summer. The ice was either hauled in from nearby mountains or produced in open basins at the ice house site. Such local ice production plants were typically supplied with fresh water from qanats, the ingenious water supply tunnels, that brought water for human settlements and irrigation from the distant mountains.

“The ice houses, whose origin is believed to go back more than 2000 years, gradually became obsolete with the advent of electricity and the introduction of the refrigerators to the households. Because they were made of perishable materials, most of the ice houses have disappeared and the rest are facing a grim future,” he says.

Ancient Iranians were well attuned to their natural environment and engineered all kinds of coping mechanisms. In addition to well-insulated earth buildings, they pioneered wind catchers that circulated natural cooling during hot winter months.

And although so much of that knowledge has been lost, we are mindful of a small but definite trend to reincorporate ancient wisdom into contemporary developments.

Read more about the qanat water systems here.

Image of ice houses in Iran and Kashan ice house via Shutterstock

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Located astride the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza’s only five star hotel is less a model of conspicuous consumption than it is a monument to the kind of normality that puts within reach at least a nibble of luxury.

Currently based in Amman, Abdelhamid recently talked to Brownbook about the hotel that was built in 2000. He told the magazine that people were skeptical about the project given that it was built just after the Oslo agreements.

“I will make Gaza the new Singapore,” you know, a horizon of skyscrapers,’ said Abdelhamid.

Facilities include wireless internet, a coffee shop and restaurant, as well as a bookshop that stocks important Middle Eastern titles that are unavailable elsewhere in Gaza. Of course, that didn’t happen but the hotel still stands proud. Mostly foreign journalists and a small selection of wealthy Gazan families congregate at the boutique hotel, especially just before sunset.

Although this kind of luxury is unattainable to the great majority of residents, both the initial construction project and the continued success of the hotel has benefitted the local community.

In addition to teaching workers how to make adobe bricks out of a sand and clay mixture that then bake in the sun, Abdelhamid worked with furniture craftsmen and women to design a great deal of the handcrafted furnishings that give the hotel its distinctive style.

‘I believe design can be used to honour, develop and enact principles of environmental, economic and cultural sustainability,’ he said.

Adobe construction is particularly well-suited to hot climates since the thick earthen walls help to regulate interior temperatures. It is a common construction material in other desert countries as well, including the southwestern part of the United States.

Also involved with Gaza’s green school project, which has received support from across the globe, Abdelhamid has become a powerful voice of sustainable design in the region.

Meanwhile, the iconic Aldeira Hotel continues to hover above the rubble – both physically and metaphorically – instilling a stubborn sense pride among a people long beleaguered by decades of stale politics.

Back in 2010, the manager of Al Deira, shared some of the hotel’s hardest stories with FT: The darkest moment for Gaza and the al-Deira hotel, he said, “was in the months before the Hamas takeover of the territory in June 2007. As Gaza descended into bloody lawlessness, criminal gangs began to kidnap foreign visitors.

Once again, the al-Deira’s guests had to stay away. “The kidnapping situation drove us nearly crazy. How could we run our business without foreigners?” Samir Skaik said. To make matters worse, gunmen from rival Palestinian factions threatened to close down the al-Deira should they ever find the property harbouring members of another faction.

More than once, the manager was forced into delicate negotiations with gangs of militant gunmen. Two factors helped Mr Skaik resolve such moments of crisis: a sunny disposition – “I am always smiling” – and a fierce determination not to get caught up in the many conflicts raging in Gaza.

“We never make problems with anyone,” Mr Skaik says.

As of Oct, 7, 2023 it is not known if the Al Deira Hotel is functioning.

::Al Deira Hotel

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Over the weekend, two earthquakes measuring 6.3 and 6.4 on the richter scale hit the country’s east Azerbaijan province, killing at least 360 people and displacing and injuring thousands more.

Most of these casualties occurred because poorly-constructed buildings made with cheap materials collapsed, according to Kaveh Samiei, principal architect at AAG and a lecturer at Semnan University, crushing their inhabitants.

Leading causes of earthquake casualties

The Iranian authorities have been criticized for their emergency response to the earthquakes over the weekend after search and rescue efforts were called off within less than 24 hours.

But the Foundation of Housing, a branch of the Roads and Urbanism ministry should also be held to account as the development of rural areas falls under their jurisdiction.

The University of Tulane in the United States sites three main causes of high casualties in areas that are prone to earthquakes: a) population density, b) construction standards, and c) emergency preparedness.

Given that Iran is one of the most seismically-active areas in the world and that 126,000 people have been killed in earthquakes since 1900, the government should map fault lines and establish building codes accordingly.

“We can’t prevent earthquakes from happening,” Samiei told Green Prophet in an email interview, “but at least we can prevent the deaths of hundreds of people that are caused by collapsed buildings.”

Crushed by the earth in Bam, Iran

“If we can build safe and resistant structures, then we will decrease the rate of deaths and injuries,” he added.

Samiei explained that most rural Iranians live in buildings that have bulky walls and wooden ceilings that crush residents when large earthquakes strike.

“In the recent earthquake, almost all of the buildings that were damaged were constructed in this way. And exactly the same thing happened in Bam.”

Samiei is referring to the 2003 Bam earthquake in southeastern Iran that killed 150,000 people.

“The experience of some countries like Japan shows that it is possible to construct safer buildings,” the architect continued. He said that the use of “lightweight” construction materials in Japan is a strategic approach that could be implemented in Iran, though he emphasized that technology should be supplemented with appropriate safety education and disaster preparedness.

Earthquake preparedness in earth buildings

The worst earthquake in recorded human history killed 830,000 people in 1556, according to Tulane researchers. Most of the casualties were living in wind-deposited silt and clay caves in Shaaxi, China.

Earth construction may be great for staying cool in hot climates and reducing waste of natural resources, but this kind of construction must be coupled with sophisticated engineering to ensure safety – especially along fault lines.

“In some parts of Iran it will be necessary to deconstruct nearly 100% of the existing buildings and plan a new village,” Samiei warns.

“This will take a lot of time to complete.”

The post Iran’s Earth Buildings are the Leading Cause of Quake Casualties appeared first on Green Prophet.

Building with earth can be beautiful, especially when viewed through the lens of Sicilian photographer Giusi Cosentino. We featured her work once before in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution. One of her most renowned images depicts a veiled woman holding a used canister of tear gas – a particularly lethal brand of which was used against protestors.

Now the talented photographer has sent a new series of images depicting the traditional builders of Siwa. Tucked away in the northwest corner of Egypt, this oasis just 100 km from the border of Libya has a long tradition of building with kerchief, an affordable and widely accessible material composed of sun-dried salt, mud and sand. Although neglected for some years, this construction style has made a resurgence of late, and Giusi captured its essence on film.

“When you arrive in Siwa, you get the feeling of reliving the past – a completely different era than our own,” writes Cosentino, who is currently working in Sicily after a short assignment in Cairo. “The difference in the local population’s way of life is immediately visible in their social habits, in their work, and in this case their methods of construction.”

“The unique mud houses immediately capture your attention after arriving in the oasis, along with the harmony that exists between native homes and the surrounding natural environment,” she continues. In addition to blending into the landscape, kerchief houses are significantly cooler than contemporary homes built of concrete, for example.

“I had an opportunity to take some photos during the construction of a dwelling. It is my hope that through this series of images called The House of Siwa I can demonstrate the remarkable dedication and skill of the local craftsmen, hands full of mud under the hard sun, body and nature working in harmony.”

“The interesting thing for me was the special technique of building. Using only simple earthen materials, the skilled artisans created masterpieces of architecture. This work and good will are the hallmarks of this small population. In all of its simplicity, Siwa is a magical place with wonderful people.”

The post Egypt’s Desert Architecture (Photo Essay by Giusi Cosentino) appeared first on Green Prophet.

And best of all, the project slated for what will eventually become an eco-village and Buddhist retreat takes its form and inspiration from Egyptian architect (and the Middle East’s father of sustainable building) Hassan Fathy.

Howard and his team are striving to build the ultimate ecological, affordable and appropriate home to suit the needs of our stressed planet. As such, the Regenerative Home will be constructed using hiperadobe rammed-earth walls, while the ancient Nubian vault system perfected by Hassan Fathy will be used to enclose the space.

An attractive design that slashes material consumption and relies on an ancient roofing technique, earthen Nubian vault structures stay cool in summer and warm in winter and are significantly more affordable than their timber counterparts. Watch this video to get a sense of why we so richly need an earth architecture revolution.

In addition to relying on passive design for its heating and cooling needs, the $15,000 home will be earthquake and fireproof and will incorporate closed-loop permaculture principles so that everything has multiple purposes and nothing goes to waste.

Once the funds have been raised, the Regenerative Home will take shape at the Wirikutu Peace Fellowship near La Garita, Colorado, which will eventually become an eco-village and buddhist retreat center. We think it’s exciting to know that despite the enormous criticism he received during his own lifetime as a result of a shortsighted bureaucracy, Hassan Fathy’s vision has become posthumously influential across wide physical and ideological boundaries.

As part of the project, for which Howard is seeking financial assistance from the Indiegogo crowd, Howard intends to document the entire construction process and make plans available online for a mere $10. In so doing, the founder of Earthen Hand hopes to help scores of other people pursue their dream of building a home that they – and the earth – can actually afford.

:: Indiegogo

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