ABSTRACT
Throughout the development discourse of the 1950s, earth architecture emerged as an essential element of postwar, post-independence discourses of modernity that foregrounded questions of poverty, forced displacement, and humanitarianism within the fold of emerging geopolitical and environmental consciousness. The United Nations promoted earth architecture through various reports, memos, workshops, and international seminars as the most prudent and just answer to the housing needs of the Third World. Development consultants’ fascination with earth architecture came from the idea that building from nothingness would inject “hope” into the developing society at times of crisis. This looming aura of ever-present crisis enabled development experts to establish a circuit of expert knowledge about earth architecture that mobilized materials, techniques, expertise, and ideas in legislative terms. By outlining the various development experts’ approaches to earth architecture and its genealogy, this chapter critically interrogates how the development discourse imagined and utilized “hope” and “crisis” in development projects.
