<
https://www.curbed.com/article/building-after-fire-reconstruction-earthen-architecture.html>
"We all know that we are infuriatingly terrible at preventing the preventable.
The calamitous fires that have swept out of the hills around Los Angeles,
laying siege like an invading army in a pincer formation, spring from a mixture
of natural phenomena and the human refusal to act on what we know. Wildfires
are a special kind of disaster in that we are often the ones who light, feed,
and propagate them. Flames pass from house to house, pausing for however long
it takes to suck up all the energy stored up inside, furiously converting
furniture, bedding, drywall, photographs, appliances, and diaries into carbon,
heat, and toxic plumes. The longer a fire lingers, the hotter it grows and the
more time it has to slip next door and start the process all over again.
There’s an upside to this human agency, though: As suppliers of fuel, we have
some control, not over a fire that’s currently burning but potentially over the
next ones. We can’t placate an earthquake or deflect a tornado, but we can
refrain from turning a small brush fire into an all-consuming conflagration —
especially in areas that have already burned and will soon be ready to rebuild
but will inevitably catch fire again.
“As long as we continue to build houses with wood in places that are expected
to burn, the only outcome we can expect is that houses will burn,” says Michele
Barbato, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University
of California Davis. “We need to build noncombustible homes.”
Barbato believes that builders in Southern California and other fire-prone
places should return to an ancient construction material that is plentiful,
ubiquitous, indestructible, harmless to harvest, and easy to use: dirt. Earthen
structures have a long and varied history: the hand-formed Great Mosque in
Djenné, Mali; adobe churches, vertical villages, and new high-end mansions in
Mexico. They have a reputation for frailty and for melting in the rain, but
Barbato and his students have honed a technique of compressing soil into
manageable blocks and hardening them with small amounts of cement. They have
blasted the results with temperatures up to 1,800 degrees — as hot as a
wildfire with 60-foot flames — for seven hours at a time. The blocks, which are
cheaper, tougher, and more sustainable than clay-based bricks, remained
impervious. They can be waterproofed with plaster, reinforced to withstand
earthquakes and hurricanes, and manufactured on a vast scale with minimal
environmental damage. “If you want structures that perform well against
multiple hazards, this is a no-brainer,” Barbato says. “It’s safer and more
sustainable, and it can be cheaper.” It can also yield genuine architecture:
Nearly 25 years ago, the Burkina Faso–born German architect Francis Kéré
developed a similar kind of durable, handmade earth-and-cement brick for a
primary school in his home village of Gando. The project made him famous and
contributed to his 2022 Pritzker Prize."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-congestion-pricing-safer-streets-nyc/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
