I recently wrote an article about living walls for GreenHomeBuilding.com, and in doing the research for this I came upon an interesting approach to creating a kind of living wall or retaining wall using geotextile materials. Basically, loosely woven bags filled with a growing medium can be stacked to form walls that then support plant … Read more
Kikuma Watanabe is an associate professor of architecture at Kochi University of Technology in Japan and is responsible for the design of several wonderful earthbag projects around the world. He collaborated with Akio Inoue (a Japanese professor of philosophy) on designing an eco-village near Lake Victoria in Uganda, and they have helped the Africans build … Read more
Road base is a mixture of clay and gravel used in road building throughout the world. As an engineered material designed to withstand extreme loads (trucks and cars), you are assured of good working properties for earthbag building. While site based soils are less expensive and require less transport, the working properties are unknown and … Read more
I found another great way to build gable and vaulted roofs — with pallets: Pallet Pavilions The site referenced above shows how pallets can be used for walls and roofs. This is exciting because free pallets are usually quite easy to get in most countries and they’re very strong. Many are made of hardwood such … Read more
Here’s an email from one of our readers (abbreviated for ease of reading). I just had a few questions about building an earthbag home, and I hope you can get me pointed in the right direction. First off, I’m broke, so these questions pertain to me saving up for my future home. My dream home … Read more
In 2005 there was much publicity and delight regarding a lovely earthbag clinic built in a small town in the Philippines. This was a project of Illac Diaz and several organizations there. You can see the finished building below. Since then it has been privately reported that the building has fallen into disrepair. Some photos … Read more