Nader Khalili — Dirtbag Inventor — Dead at 72
The Iranian-born architect and humanitarian Nader Khalili died of congestive heart failure March 5th, 2008. Best known as the founder of the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), he invented a green construction method he called Super Adobe, particularly for use as emergency housing, but also as an alternative construction method for third world communities. He also invented the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses, but energy costs and pollution concerns have made that method less popular than the Super Adobe.
In Super Adobe construction, walls are constructed from bags filled with damp soil, preferably soil with fairly high clay content. This is basically a variant on the tried and true sand-bag used by military and flood control agencies for the past 100 years or so. The difference is the bags are piled high — a feat enabled by strands of barbed-wire between each layer to keep the bags from slipping — then the damp soil is tampered down to form an adobe-like packed earth inside the bag. When covered with a layer of plaster the resulting walls are visually identical to brick structures, but the walls are much thicker, resulting in a high thermal mass that is ideal for sub-tropical and desert environments.
My only complaint with this construction method is the name — I mean if you fill sandbags with dirt instead of sand, don’t you have dirtbags?
Actually its called earth bag construction. Nader would never use the word dirt. Nader would say “Dirt is a four letter word. Once you call the earth dirt you can pollute it and throw all your trash in it, you no longer respect it. Once you call it dirt you can no longer imagine anything beautiful being created from it.” To see and truly understand the beauty and mastery Nader brought to earth construction go to www.calearth.org
Comment by earth — March 31, 2008 @ 11:47 pm