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The Rammed Earth House
by David Easton and Cynthia Wright

      The Rammed Earth House is an eye-opening example of how the most dramatic innovations in home design and construction frequently have their origins in the distant past. By rediscovering the most ancient of all building materials--earth--forward thinking home builders can now create structures that set new standards for beauty , durability, and efficient use of natural resources.

      Humans have been using earth as a primary building material for more than ten thousand years. Rammed earth, as practiced today, involves tamping a mixture of earth, water, and a little cement into wooden forms to create thick, sturdy masonry walls.

      Rammed earth combines pleasing aesthetics and intense practicality with a powerful sense of place. Rammed earth homes are built entirely on-site, using basic elements--earth, water, and a little cement. The solid masonry walls permit design flexibility while providing year-round comfort and minimal use of energy. The builder and resident of a rammed earth house will experience the deep satisfaction of creating permanence in a world dominated by the disposable.

      Earthbuilt homes offer their inhabitants a powerful sense of security and well-being and have a permanence and solidity altogether lacking in so many of today's modular, pre-fab houses. David Easton is the founder, along with Cynthia Wright, of Rammed Earth Works (REW Associates), a company that over the past twenty years has designed and built more than one hundred rammed earth structures for residential and commercial clients around the world.

The Rammed Earth House    $40.00    Quantity:

The Rammed Earth Renaissance (TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE.)    --    Quantity:

      Note: David Easton invented "terra tile floors", using a soil-cement mixture which is troweled about an inch thick on the floor and cut apart into separate tiles. I read his article in an old issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine and learned to make our own terra tiles. Along the way we added a few techniques of our own to the process. Easton barely covers the topic in his book The Rammed Earth House, so be sure to check out my book Living Homes: Integrated Design & Construction for more indepth coverage of this unique flooring method.

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Buildings of Earth and Straw
Structural Design for Rammed Earth and Straw-Bale Architecture
by Bruce King, P.E.

      There are many other excellent books on strawbale and rammed earth construction to help guide the novice builder down the path to building the house of their dreams. Buildings of Earth and Straw is intended more as a companion to the other guides, rather than a competitor. Author Bruce King has tackled the engineering side of working with earth and straw building materials to create a common language for builders, architects, and building inspectors. With this book as your guide, you can build a strawbale or rammed earth house in a way that is truly structurally sound and you can provide the building inspector with the engineering data to back it up.

      Although parts of the book will require an engineering background to understand it, most of the content is accessable to the lay person, and King makes even the mundane engineering interesting, and at times, humorous. This book is truly essential for anyone building a strawbale or rammed earth house in places where building codes are enforced. In places where building codes do not exist, this book is still highly recommended, to insure that you build a safe and stable structure.

Buildings of Earth and Straw    $25.00    Quantity:

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Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture
How to Build Your Own
by Nader Khalili

      Khalili's classic, authoritative manual describes how to build arches, domes, and vaults with earth, as well as techniques to fire and glaze earth buildings to transform them into ceramic houses. This newly revised edition also provides insight into the latest response by building officials to Superadobe or earthbag technology (structures of sandbags and barbed wire), a patented system that is free for the owner-builder and licensed for commercial use.

      Nader Khalili's ideas on ceramic houses and earth architecture have been published by NASA and utilized by the United Nations, and have passed building and safety tests in California. This new edition is now in its fifth printing.

      Fine Homebuilding magazine said this of the book: "This is an extraordinary work. Though very much the personal expression of an impassioned visionary, Ceramic Houses is full of experiential advice, technical guidance, and encouragement to those who would join the author in his search for cheap, durable, attainable housing for much of the world."

      Nader Khalili, an Iranian-born California architect and author, is the designer and innovator of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as "ceramic houses" as well as the Superadobe building technologies. He received his education in Iran, Turkey, and the United States, and has been a licensed architect in California since1970. In 1975, he closed his successful practice in the United States and Iran designing high-rise buildings and journeyed by motorcycle for five years through the Iranian desert, where he worked closely with local villagers to develop his earth architecture prototypes. His impressions have been collected in his book Racing Alone. Mr. Khalili serves as a consultant to the United Nations and is a contributor to NASA on construction technologies for the moon and Mars. He is the founder and director of the Cal-Earth Institute, Geltaftan Foundation--dedicated to research and development in earth and space architecture technologies for the moon and Mars.

Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture    $25.00    Quantity: