ABSTRACT
Despite such credentials, earthen construction remains a venerable tradition with a suspicious past. Like the very metaphor Nebuchadnezzar’s dream inspired, earthen buildings are much admired but ultimately seen as fatally flawed in their inability to comply with contemporary definitions of durability, immutability, and high performance, much like the heroes of long ago. Ten international conferences on earthen heritage over the past forty years and the recent ascendency of Sustainability and the green building movement have done much to increase the visibility of earth as a viable construction system yet the material and its technologies remain isolated from everyday contemporary design and building practice. This is especially egregious given the long and largely forgotten history of the rediscovery of earthen architectural traditions in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and the dawn of the modern movement. Francois Cointeraux in France and
‘Thou, O king, sawest, and, behold, a great image. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.’ (The Book of Daniel 2:31-40).
