I recently got an email from Sunny Tsai, a Chinese professor of architecture (now retired) with an update on a lovely meditation dome he and some 1400 Buddhist volunteers have just completed in Taiwan. He says that “To reach my idea of carbon reduction and sustainability, I avoided using all kinds of industrial materials and … Read more
CalEarth, the Superadobe folks who helped build the earthbag domes that comprise the Pegasus Children’s Project near Kathmandu, Nepal have sent out this press release:
Superadobe/Earthbag Orphanage Withstands Nepal Earthquake
Cal-Earth Low-cost Sustainable Earthen Housing Solutions Proved Effective and Safe in Earthquakes
I own a few acres of desert property in Southern New Mexico and have often wondered what the underground temperature would be about 6 feet below the surface in this region. Summers can be quite hot and winters are fairly mild, so digging into the ground might be a good way to develop a residence that would be pleasant all year round, with very little additional energy input. To test this theory out, I thought that somehow burying a recording thermometer deep under ground would provide useful information.
Many people have asked about burying earthbag domes, and unfortunately I know of few actual examples of doing this. So I thought that a fun and informative experiment would be to build a small earthbag dome underground on our property, place the recording thermometer inside, and completely close it up for a year.
“A windcatcher is a traditional Persian architectural element to create natural ventilation in buildings. Windcatchers come in various designs: uni-directional, bi-directional, and multi-directional. Windcatchers remain present in many countries and can be found in traditional Persian-influenced architecture throughout the Middle East, including in the small Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Climate responsive or climate appropriate design/ climate responsive architecture is discussed in a free 1993 ebook by Swiss authors Paul Gut and Dieter Ackerknecht. This book focuses on appropriate building construction in tropical and subtropical regions. This is an important topic because many times people forget to adapt designs to their specific building conditions.
Question from a reader:
“I want to build one of your earthbag Earth Lodges in the tropics. What do you think?”