Sharon Davis Design   Nepal   The New York practice of Sharon Davis worked with the NGO Possible Health and the Nepalese government in raising new medical facilities in Achham, one of Nepal’s poorest and most remote regions. Surrounded by mountains in the Seti River Valley, the c

Dellekamp Arquitectos   Mexico   Conceived as a refuge, the Cabo House stands on a series of platforms built with local earth that descend adapting to the slope of the site. From these telluric platforms, walls of the same material, rammed earth, rise in parallels to frame views tow

David Chipperfield   Sudan   The excavation site of Naga is one of the largest in Sudan, containing the ruins of what was one of the religious centers of the ancient Kingdom of Kush. Located some 50 kilometers to the east of the Nile River, and a three-hour drive from Khartoum,

DnA_Design and Architecture   China   Dedicated to Wang Jing – an imperial scholar of the Ming Dynasty who was chief editor of the Yongle Encyclopedia –, the memorial hall is inserted into the traditional town center of Wang village, which is quite run-down and threatened by neglect and

tres birds workshop   United States   This residence of 650m² was built using 200 tons of rammed earth colored with pigments from the region, and compressed into 75cm-thick walls that provide great thermal inertia to favor energy saving. Four geothermal wells were also installed for this

SoPA (Social Practice Architecture)   Tanzania   The project was built using mainly two materials: soil excavated from the site and locally collected wood. It was completed in a period of four months, with the participation of the people of Kibaoni as well as international collaborators... [+]

De Gouden Liniaal Architecten   Belgium   The tower goes up in a former gravel extraction area now converted into the nature reserve of RivierPark Maasvallei. The outer walls were built with local materials – 20% gravel, 40% ocher-colored earth, and 40% clay, stabilized with trass – in seven

FabriKG   Mexico   To protect the building from floods during the hurricane season, the structure rises 1.2m with a concrete plinth on which the rammed earth walls rest. In this way the complex seems to emerge from the ground itself in the middle of a palm grove... [+]

Foster + Partners   France   Known for its rich historic and artistic heritage, Narbonne, founded by Romans in 118 BC, was once a major port. Today it is a vibrant city, with an impressive legacy of buildings, ancient relics, and archaeological sites. At the gates of the city, n

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mali   Located where the Niger and Bani rivers meet, Mopti is Mali’s fourth largest city and its main commercial port. After the restoration of the Great Mosque of Mopti, commonly known as the Mosque of Komoguel, The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) turned

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The success of the primary school in Gando and its positive impact on the community encouraged to build a secondary school to offer opportunities to those students who wanted to continue their studies. Inspired in the distribution of the surrounding

In the village of Rudrapur, located in the Dinajpur Disrtict of northern Bangladesh, the German architect Anna Heringer – in conjunction with Veronika Lang and the non-profit organization Dipshikha – recently completed a therapy center for people wit

Fernando Vela Cossío   Earth has been the quintessential building material of farming people. Thanks to its being so extraordinarily available and cheap, combined with its bioclimatic performance and its capacity to blend into the environment, raw earth has been a constant

Luis Maldonado   Thanks to its environmental benefits and also to its aesthetic qualities, the different techniques applied to construction with mud still have a future in architecture. 

Luis Maldonado   Compressed Earth Block (CEB) is a building material that is habitually used to raise walls using conventional construction techniques. It can come it different sizes, but the most common one is 15x15x30 centimeters. The most unusual aspect of the CEB

One of the main challenges of building with earth today is that of transforming its artisanal character, and begin using it in industrialized building processes. Such was the goal pursued, for instance, in the design and construction of the Gugler P