Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own

Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary Alternative From Building a House with 2X4's
Review: Are you searching for an environmentally safe alternative to building a house with hundreds of 2x4's? If so you will love this book. It is a fast read discussing one man's quest for designing houses that are safe and easy to build for everyone in the world. There are several examples of houses and schools built with this method. At the end there is a section on how to build a model house out of clay using this method. It is a fun project to do with kids. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods.

Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary Alternative From Building a House with 2X4's
Review: Are you searching for an environmentally safe alternative to building a house with hundreds of 2x4's? If so you will love this book. It is a fast read discussing one man's quest for designing houses that are safe and easy to build for everyone in the world. There are several examples of houses and schools built with this method. At the end there is a section on how to build a model house out of clay using this method. It is a fun project to do with kids. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods.

Rating:
Summary: Rebuilding safely in Iran and elsewhere, after earthquakes
Review: If ever a book was inspired by compassion for earthquake victims, this is it. Aware of the bitter experience of Middle East peoples with seismic disasters, architect Nader Khalili pulls together what works in those same cultures to show how we can build affordable housing that will survive major earthquakes.

Key principles: Use the earth (clay) underfoot as your building material. Spare the forests and watersheds.

Use simple human-scale building elements, like bricks or sandbags that ordinary people can stack by hand.

Use the arch, dome, and vault. These architectural forms work where post and beam timbers are not available. They are seismically stable. They are not subject to the gravitational loads that make flat roofs cave in over time. They make climatically comfortable spaces with sun and shade surfaces that circulate hot and cool air appropriately.

Fire the clay structure to make it a strong unitary enclosure, like an inverted teacup. It will slide safely over seismically moving earth.

Ceramic Houses - and Khalili's work generally - offers a timely recipe for new development and rebuilding in seismically active areas like the Middle East, and, take note, California. It's no accident that Khalili's prototype structures have been built and approved by local authorities in Hesperia, CA.

Nader Khalili brings together the clay and earth underfoot, the architectural vocabulary of arch, dome, and vault, and simple building technques that ordinary people can use to build seismically safe, comfortable, inexpensive, and beautiful houses.

Rating:
Summary: Work in Progress
Review: The author is obviously a person of great vision and enormous generosity of spirit. The book is very good, and I hope that a rating of three stars isn't some insult where no insult is deserved. I was very disappointed because I expected a serious discussion of superadobe techniques, which I regard as possibly more practical than the ceramic constructions. The book has only seven pages treating superadobe. Those are pasted as an afterthought, right at the end. They don't constitute a detailed and serious discussion. As much information can be found on the calearth.org web site. So, I felt that the advertisements of the book were a little misleading.

The book itself is an education on classical earth construction and the improvement produced by firing it. As a person unfamiliar with architecture and construction, I had hoped to find something like a cookbook. Just tell me how to build a nice house easily, and I'd be happy to do it. Part of the education is to realize that things aren't quite so simple. Many issues arise, and, at the time of its writing, not all of them are well understood or totally settled. In particular, the details of firing a house into its ceramic status is not only explained in a partial way, but clearly more work is required to get a full understanding. The author could successfully fire houses himself, but the process was not reduced, at this writing, to entirely simple formulas for the use of lay persons. In that sense, each person working from the book would need to take on some considerable personal responsibility. It might not all work correctly. Consequently, I don't consider this book to be an especially good guide for a novice or amateur builder. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. However, I wouldn't read it, put up my own dome adobe house, and then sit down for tea underneath my own dome. The thing would probably fall in.

Rating:
Summary: Work in Progress
Review: The author is obviously a person of great vision and enormous generosity of spirit. The book is very good, and I hope that a rating of three stars isn't some insult where no insult is deserved. I was very disappointed because I expected a serious discussion of superadobe techniques, which I regard as possibly more practical than the ceramic constructions. The book has only seven pages treating superadobe. Those are pasted as an afterthought, right at the end. They don't constitute a detailed and serious discussion. As much information can be found on the calearth.org web site. So, I felt that the advertisements of the book were a little misleading.

The book itself is an education on classical earth construction and the improvement produced by firing it. As a person unfamiliar with architecture and construction, I had hoped to find something like a cookbook. Just tell me how to build a nice house easily, and I'd be happy to do it. Part of the education is to realize that things aren't quite so simple. Many issues arise, and, at the time of its writing, not all of them are well understood or totally settled. In particular, the details of firing a house into its ceramic status is not only explained in a partial way, but clearly more work is required to get a full understanding. The author could successfully fire houses himself, but the process was not reduced, at this writing, to entirely simple formulas for the use of lay persons. In that sense, each person working from the book would need to take on some considerable personal responsibility. It might not all work correctly. Consequently, I don't consider this book to be an especially good guide for a novice or amateur builder. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. However, I wouldn't read it, put up my own dome adobe house, and then sit down for tea underneath my own dome. The thing would probably fall in.

Rating:
Summary: Carry Adobe, rammed earth, and Cob to the next level.
Review: This book will teach you how to make your adobe, rammed earth or cob building a permanent structure that can stand up to the elements. I wish it had more photo's, colour ones to give us an idea how this type of architecture looks in colour. It would be nice if a new edition came out since I am left with quite a few questions.