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is an architect and an earth design and construction consultant she holds a postgraduate degree in earthing architecture from karate ray ensa renault
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after working for unesco on earth and built heritage in ecuador and researching earth potential use for design at amaco research center in france since 2018 she is a faculty member of the
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postgraduate in 3d printing architecture here in iraq she is currently combining academic and research work with the professional activity of architectura de terra
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an architecture and earth design consultancy practice here founded in 2018 here in barcelona explores contemporary possibilities for
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earth and other sustainable materials both in catalonia and in the middle east so after this very synthetic presentation and i'm glad i am glad to welcome elizabeth carnevale
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and her lecturer architecture mate of earth so thank you risavetta for being here with us today you may share your presentation and begin
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whenever you want thank you fabio so i'm going to share my presentation with you yeah okay now we are we are with the pdf
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we are not seeing the full screen maybe you can stop and share again okay now perfect yes okay good evening everybody i am
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uh really honored to be here and to give a lecture about how you can build with earth which is my passion and my job um i'm so honored that actually this
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morning i was reviewing the uh ted talk advice to give a the greatest talk and like the first one was dream big share an idea that could actually change the world
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and i thought oh that that's easy that's that's what i'm going to do i that's what i'm doing i'm sharing an idea that i really believe could uh change the world so i'm going to go through uh the reason why i think
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uh building with earth is a is a great idea and i hope i will leave you some of the interest i have for this material after this talk um
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well i'm i'm an architect as i said and i'm italian i come from turin in the north of italy it's a region in piedmont where actually farms are traditionally built with earth
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but growing a dev there i just couldn't realize that it was actually an astonishingly good idea to build with earth that's because in architecture school
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the image we had of what a sustainable building should look like was more something like this right something very modern with active system and photovoltaics modules and a
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lot of steel and glass basically so when i went out of get out of school i started working in architectural practice and trying to apply some bioclimatic criteria and
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some sustainable [Music] idea to to my design but at this very same time i also started going to construction sites seeing what was
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actually there before and during the fact that our designs were built uh and i got quite shocked i must say because i realized um that
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beside this beautiful picture of a piece of architecture that we can see on the internet around monographies uh there was a lot that wasn't said and it wasn't told
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right the fact that there was some some piece of landscape that would be um modified uh for a very long span of time by a building and the fact that this relationship uh
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maybe was not that uh soft maybe sometimes it was a bit uh violence and the idea also that at the end of the building life there was a lot of material that would never have been used again that
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was impossible to to recycle and also the fact that i started realizing how our architecture was somehow a facade architecture in many cases i realized that there was the main
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material we were using and then there was some facade material that was just concealing what we didn't want to see about our own design and our own constructions and all of this
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things i did up and i started not feeling that well anymore about what i was doing so i decided to take a sabbatical ear and i started wandering around
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south america basically and uh at some point i was in in the andes in in the chilean andes and there it was i bumped into earthen architecture that
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was a traditional way to build and it made a lot of sense there because it's a place where it is virtually impossible to bring some material in order to build so everything must just use what is right under your
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feet or or just uh around you um and at the same time it made a lot of sense not not only from a matter a material point of view but also uh when when we look at the the
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integration of this piece of architecture in its landscape because it it was made of the very earth that was there and you knew that one day it would be very easy to
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uh to reintegrate it into the the natural resource cycle and yeah and at the same time this concealing idea was not there anymore right every material was right there in its in its place with its
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function but it was visible so i was deeply fascinated and i still thought it was something just falteristic and that i would never see
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again when i went uh down from the mountains and into the city uh but at the very contrary i realized that um they're in in chile and in argentina as well there
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was a young generation of architects that was actually carrying on this material because this material earth was never really out of fashion in construction people were still using it they never stopped
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and then therefore architects were trying to experiment with it and try to use it in contemporary design and together with other materials and trying to literally reverse
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the use of the mud break like in this example so that was my aha moment i thought okay this can be done actually and it does
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it is it makes a lot of sense it's it is it is an answer to contemporary architectural needs uh i want to learn how to do it and i want uh to bring it with me and i want to defuse
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this um when i come back so uh and there it was i left the andes for the alps and i moved to crater there is the
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largest world research center about earth and it has a post-graduate cycle that lasted two years where you basically are a group of 20 people from
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all over the world in love with earth and you just keep learning and experimenting about this material i learned a lot as you can imagine and still i learned a lot about the material about
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earth and heritage but i wasn't really sure about how to use this material as an archetype for contemporary architecture how could i start the very same day to build with
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this material now and here um so together with another architect that had the same um uh questions after this postgraduate and lis antoine
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we set up a research project we raised funds and we decided that we would make a call and ask anyone in france that had built with earth
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during the past 30 years so we started from 75 1975 onward and we started collecting material about and we made a map about all of this
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uh building that were made with earth we had almost 200 buildings and and at some point we say we want really to get to know these people and ask them questions
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uh so we started for a road trip that lasted almost two months we picked not the hundred but just the 30 most interesting of these most entering ones of these buildings
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and we made hours and hours of film interviews with their architects their contractors and the clients of each of them the promoter
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so here is where we really felt we got a grip about what does it mean and how does it work today to build with this material its pros and cons its difficulties its obstacles but also the
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leverages the reason why all of these very different people built with earth and after this i really felt ready
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so i was at the time i i moved to barcelona and i started my own practice and as soon as possible i started dealing with earth so this is a yoga center that was
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completed in 2018 as you can see it's made of earth and wood it's in a into an existing building and it was um the first building here in barcelona metropolitan area
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using prefabricated rendered blocks which are quite an innovative technique and then from here i realized
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it was also important that i could help other designers and other architects to build with earth not just wait uh for the perfect lion the perfect project in order to make a nice design but
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really to help diffusing this material and this is when i got in touch with um other people that i that i met through during my um my path that are also
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earth experts and we work together as a team of consultant now on on projects uh for instance like this this is a project a very recent one it's a primary school in nanter
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in the outskirts of paris and it really show how earth made it into one of the most difficult uh sectors which are public buildings
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especially in france which are building that have an enormous amount of regulation uh and of any type and still when you see that this kind of building has earth we
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really say that there is a there is a path and actually we already see that other buildings are following this one so architects uh architectural practice together with
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some uh consultants some expertise just about the material can really bring this material up to what would otherwise be just another building with
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conventional materials so long story short i had to pick some things that i wanted to share with you it was hard but i managed to select eight things that i want to
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tell you about my beloved material earth the first one you could guess is that earth is sustainable it is the main reason right why we go
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toward this material but i think it is really important to understand uh why and how we can say it is sustainable first of all earth is a local material
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local means really local in very few cases we are able to use the very same ground that we excavate in order to build but in most cases then i would say in any case
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where earth use earth comes from a very short range of from a very short radius this means no transport this also means that
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earth is an available material in a in an era where we are badly running out of sand for instance because of concrete construction having a material that is local and largely available
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is an asset i think for a resilient uh architecture of tomorrow um local uh also mean that there are some there are some pioneer projects
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like this one bc materials from uh it's in a belgian project from a belgian cooperative they are actually setting up an on-site building material production so they're
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able to come to the to the site and to excavate and to produce the materials like for instance the bricks or the plastering just with the earth and just on sites
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this way they are minimizing uh really down to zero what is the transport and i think it's an extremely uh interesting approach to construction right
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nowadays our our materials travel a lot of kilometers uh being local is not only a material aspect but it also means earthen architecture has a very strong
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connection with a place and using earth sometimes it is also a way to show and to to advertise this relationship uh this is a very recent building it's a
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museum in china that is uh placed into a a city which is famous for its earth which is famous for its porcelain production so having this museum built with earth
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really materializes the relationship that this place has with the earth and material and this is the very earth the first line is made of uh
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and of course it can also materialize a relation a brand has with with the land of course you know i'm pretty sure you know this building the recall of her building by a person
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demoron having this candy factory with where candies are made with herbs that come from the land and then the herbs are stored in an enormous
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earthen building of course it is a very strong statement for uh for this brand it has a very strong connection to the to the meaning of what they do uh not only earth is local but is a very
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it has a very low embedded energy this means a very little energy is needed in order to use earth that we can extract just from the ground
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this is very important because when we when we look toward what is sustainable architecture or the architecture of the future we concentrate a lot on what is the energy efficiency of the building and this is important
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because uh the operation of our buildings as you can see is responsible for 28 of the overall words uh greenhouse gases
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emissions it's a lot so we better really have more efficient buildings but we still can see that another 11 is still on our side it's still uh on
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the shoulders of the building sector and that's due to materials and most of it is due to the materials we know very well concrete iron and steel nine percent of
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the word uh greenhouse gases emissions so uh while everybody is concentrating about how can we reduce this 28 percent i think it is also important and we work on this 11
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which is still an enormous amount of of pollution and of use of energy especially because we don't need that much energy to have building materials
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earth you can see it here as a ridiculous embodied energy when we compare it not only to concrete but even to to fire bricks okay i didn't put steel and glass
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in this uh diagram because they they wouldn't fit the slide by far so but you can imagine okay there there is a very huge disproportion and what is the energy we need
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in order to produce a steel beam or a reinforced concrete slab and the one that we need in order to extract earth and maybe to compact it
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because yes in most cases we are able to use earth just as it is without stabilizing it this this building is a very nice example of it uh this building was the was the image of
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this talk i really want to say that this is not a project of mine i really wish i could have this in my portfolio uh it's a building by design and
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architecture and nama to an architectural practice and then some earth in consultant practice and um it's a public building it's the european conservatory of soil
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samples made of earth of course it was made uh using a local earth reformed and combined with another earth partially but with
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absolutely no stabilization so it is pure earth it is completely recyclable and natural third once we have built with earth our building
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can be pretty much energy efficient i'm not saying earth is the perfect material but it's material that has a very important properties that are really useful once we have to design our indoor comfort
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our thermal and our moist levels first of all it's a material that has a very important thermal mass a thermal
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capacity and a thermal mass this material that is very dense and this is why as you can see it is really able to shift what is the peak of heat especially in summer this is a
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quality that is especially important in summer while we use a lot of energy for air conditioning well earth is really able to shift the penetration of the heat inside in our
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in our indoor space so it can be uh used uh in in indoor climate strategies passive ones and of course it is very useful when we have to store
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something that we want to keep at the very uniform level of temperature and of moist this is this is one of the reason why we have so many earthen buildings
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that have to do with uh with wine production and cider production as you can see here but also museums of course because what what i have in a museum normally requires a very stable
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temperature and moist level of course we also want that for our homes right uh and this is the reason why we have an uh a lot of projects that are developed
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combining heating system and earth right we have an heating system generating heat and this earthen element as you can see is also integrated into an interior design which is responsible for
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keeping there this heat as long as possible and really distributing it very slowly during the day this is an important energy efficient
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strategy i choose the black background for this slide to add a touch of mystery because even if we know uh so many things about earth and about its thermal
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behavior we sit down no we still don't know all of it you can see here the difference between you see the dotted line this is what our computer simulation would expect
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that our render wall temperature would be and you can see the other line these are all of the tests so actually the this round earth wall behaves much better than we expected
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why is that why is this wall able really to regulate temperature to have such a stable temperature with no big fluctuation which is very good for comfort
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what this man down here is the one who's been researching about this property for the last decades and uh his name is um joseph calzani he's based
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in southern france he's an architect and researcher and and constructor uh and he's actually developing together with universities this uh the system called helioterra
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which is incentive enhancing a very important property of earth earth is one of the very few natural
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face changing materials what is a phase changing materials laboratories are trying to synthesize very advanced and synthetic face changing materials these are materials that actually have
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some have some elements some particles inside of them which is able to evaporate and to condensate and this releases and absorbs energy and it goes just the way we would like
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uh it went it means when actually the uh temperature is going up we have this uh evaporation and this evaporation is actually uh absorbing energy so
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if it's getting hotter my wall helps my indoor climate to stay fresher and on the other way down uh when when the temperature goes down these particles are condensing inside of
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the building elements and therefore they are actually releasing energy just when i need it uh well as you can imagine this
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fluid that we have inside of earth is water there are some particles of water that are always present into an earthen wall even when it's completely uh dry they are always there they are
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stuck in between the clay particles of of earth and this is why their uh thermal behavior is so interesting
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and the fourth point about sustainability and earth that is it is 100 percent recyclable and this means it can really operate in a circular economy
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approach a topic that is really really hot nowadays how can we make our economy circular how are we able to
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minimize waste and reuse what we've been using already this is very important especially for us as a designer because 40 percent of the generated waste in the in the
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european union is due to building sector it's enormous okay we are recycling we are separating our garbage every day we're doing really well but then we are
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we are throwing we are dumping an enormous quantity of non-recyclable material because of our buildings so how can we revert that how can we change this
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paradigm once again i'm showing you the another part of the project by bc materials this pioneer cooperative in belgium not only they are producing
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materials on site but they also uh rethinking how once they uh this material has been uh used one day has to dismantle the nursing building they are see
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how they can actually reuse this earth and either giving it back to earth which is what they propose this just here with the barrier so the earth is able to go back into
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a natural circle uh either another really interesting way to exploit earth recyclability is to use all of the excavated earth
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cities and in general countries tend to excavate enormous volumes of earth and this earth is incredibly considered as a waste material
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as a useless material that is going to a dump it even has a cost actually to be dismantled instead of using what it could be a perfectly suitable building material
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and so one year ago finally when the project was set up in order to try to avoid this uh this crazy dynamic the name of the project is cicloter
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earthen cycle it's an european funded project and it takes place in the metropolitan area of paris the metropolitan area of paris is
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extending its underground network this means kilometers and kilometers of tunnel are going to be excavated between now and 2030
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which means 400 million tons of earth are going to be digged out excavated so these projects think about
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what to do with this earth how can we use it as a building material so the project put together a series of stakeholder partners uh which are of course researchers and
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architects but also real estate developers that are actually being teached how to use this material later on in their projects and from all of this
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um excavated earth three lines of products are being nowadays produced they have been set up and now they are starting the the production uh which are earthen blocks as you can
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see earthen panels which are like thin elements that are um that are able to uh be used in lightweight construction and earthen plastering
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earthen renders what we put up on the wall when we want to have it finished the three of them are made out of excavated earth and this is a way to give a use and on one on one side to all
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of this material and on the other side it's a way to start building with the natural and recyclable material um second point earth is connected to our architectural heritage
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we've been using earth for a very long time now and even if for us here in europe it seems like it's a new material because we've lost track about how we used to use earth uh
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the estimation is that nowadays nearly one third of the world's population is still lives in an earthen building you can see it is really a material used in most regions
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most populated regions of the world so pretty much everywhere we go we will have a local earthen construction tradition it is very much true here in catalonia for
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instance uh where actually even the city of barcelona had a lot of inner walls uh made of round earth and they are discovered from time to time
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when when houses are renovated there was in particular one region of catalonia which is the region of uh yada plade in the in the inner part of catalonia
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this is where really round earth culture lasted until the 70s of this century so it is um really alive and this is also why it's a region where
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many things are happened uh contractors are getting specialized in renders uh we have federa which is an important material uh producer um and so it's it's a region
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that is particularly um uh lively or when it comes to renders uh here you can see some uh catalan uh around earth workers
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uh as i said until the 70s that we have tracks of buildings that were built with this material and it is very curious that this the render technique uh is actually the same technique that
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is used also in asia you can see this picture is from korea or in in africa it is uh really the very same technique developed in different corners of the
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world and sometimes having this heritage can really be a trigger for uh building with earth it's the case for this enormous project that i'm really
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glad i'm helping with it's in saudi arabia next to a heritage site which is built with adobe and the government decided that they
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would actually build an enormous extension of this um around this heritage sites that would all be um built with earth
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uh it is going to be a very big project but also a very big challenge for earth to answer contemporary needs because this area will have of course
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museum but also residential spaces and they will they will have to keep with contemporary building standards all of this with adobe which is the
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probably the most forgotten uh earth and technique uh in contemporary architecture we see everywhere rounders that is on trend uh adobe bricks need a lot of surface
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in order to dry under the sun and this is why they are really um not matching our industrialized building culture but it is a technique that has a
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lot of potential and i really hope this project will help showing and demonstrating this uh heritage is not always a good point for building with earth
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sometimes it can be the trigger for it but sometimes on the other way uh there is a bad stereotype about earth this is due to the fact that earth was a popular um was a
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building material for um popular social classes so it was used in vernacular architecture in farms in rural areas and sometimes
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therefore it got associated to poverty uh and even sometimes to um bad quality buildings so this is why sometimes it is a material
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that has a stigma that got rejected and nowadays it has really has to um reprogram its image uh to to give you an example this is a
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one of the project that i saw in my road trip is in northern france that's the region where uh the traditional earthen technique is carb cob is a very nice technique using
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earth's at the wet states when it's wet and just molding it as if it was a sculpture it's a it's a beautiful technique it's a technique that makes more sense
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in this region where it rains a lot but uh it was a social housing pro project in the 90s and people absolutely rejected the idea of going to live in cobb houses because
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they associated that with poverty and they had the feeling that the government was trying to sell them some houses that were of bad quality and
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not of the right standards so what the architect did is to do some round earth instead of cobb uh houses and just by changing the technique and using the same material but with a
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different technique the image of it was different it was of an exotic or a different and new uh technique and therefore it was socially accepted and i'm talking about 1991 in france so
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you can imagine how strong the stigma still is in developing country experiences four earth is participatory and this main earth is material that allows for
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non-industrialized collective building processes this is something that was never out of fashion in most developing country people helping each other in order to build uh their houses instead of having some
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professionals doing nowadays here in in europe at least we are discovering participatory um building
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processes um training together with participatory buildings where you go and help and and learn and it works very well because earth is a material that is
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quite accessible to people with um to people who are not um construction professionals i saw it very clearly uh in a very nice experience i had where i was
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working at um amaco le granza delle this is a quite a magic place in france where actually architectural school student can go and
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they can build one-to-one scale prototypes they can really build small buildings and pavilions and when i was there actually the the
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architecture students from the grenoble architecture school they were designing and building themselves this prototype which was called terra nostra
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and uh it was actually uh designed as a unit that could be disassembled and reassembled in order to be prefabricated and assembled on sites and stack one to each
00:37:07
other in order to form um housing buildings uh and it was actually the this project was connected to an actual real estate development in the
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city of grenoble so it was really a test for something that had to be developed for real and as you see uh it was combining wooden structure and
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earthen feeling in different forms in rendered forms and also uh in earth and fiber blocks as you can see here and i really saw with my eye as a student doing
00:37:45
all of this students just like you they did around the earth they did the plaster they did the the earth and fiber blocks and at the end they assembled the building they disassembled it they transported to
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lyon city and they uh built it again in order to stand there as a visitable prototype so yeah students
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of your age build this together with a little help of cranes and transportation system and uh this was the result it is
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it was definitely inspiring and the construction of the real buildings is starting this year um and and this year the same school the same grenoble architecture school did it
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again actually they uh to the students uh designed and built of course with with some professional help a community center
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in four in a village nearby and this is the result this community center already already won two important awards the
00:39:00
american architecture price of this year and the architizer price and it really stands as a as a very interesting experience to have a whole
00:39:11
building designed and built by students with 100 natural and recyclable material is a definitely an asset five earth is going strong it is going strong in many
00:39:26
senses right we have the idea that earth is sometimes the stereotype that the earth is a weak material that it can be load-bearing for instance and here you can see this challenge that
00:39:40
always busy materials to con of reformulating the best round earth possible and building a 50 15 meters
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high self flood bearing wall so you can see here how that on one side the technique is growing and it is advancing and is actually enabling us to control more the
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structural performance of earth but it's not just about structure um we are also going getting um we are also advancing a lot in what
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world is the prefabrication you can see here martin rao i'm pretty sure you've heard of him he's the principal pioneer
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craftsman doing rounders and in particular prefabricated renders as you can see here this huge workshop allow him to have a 100 meter long
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span of wall and just being able to cut it and to transport it like uh huge blocks like huge um bricks uh this is
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uh really the top-notch level of pre-fabrication but fabrication is also getting current in ordinary renders construction as you can see in this other project which is a
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healthcare center for in a french village even cobb which is another very interesting technique even cobb is uh going forward and um toward prefabrication you can see
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this facade for instance was entirely built with prefabricated cob already back in 2002. we have new um design solution in order to insulate
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earth insulate rounders as you can see here which is not always advisable but still sometimes it can be the answer the the most adequate
00:41:51
solution and therefore we are technically able to solve this problem um there is just um experimentation about uh poor earth
00:42:04
which means using earth pretty much as concrete and stabilized with cement so it is not really a sustainable solution yet but um the experimentation is going on and
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maybe uh sometime soon we will be able to actually use earth in a liquid state inside of a framework uh as we do now for concrete without adding
00:42:28
um stabilizer like cement and then of course there is 3d printing okay here you see the second prototype house by wasp in italy it was it is
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being um finished this read this time but i'm pretty sure you saw also the very interesting project you have
00:42:54
at iac right the postgraduate 3d printing architecture i think they are still exposed from yes from friday um presentation uh they are really trying to find
00:43:08
innovative solution uh for 3d printing with earth and it is a technique that has a lot of potential because it can really combine parametric architecture and all of the advantages
00:43:20
of having just one system uh integrating with many many aspects and many functions with a sustainable material like earth so on one side uh earth is going strong
00:43:35
and on the other side we also have to know where to stop and know where to actually embrace vulnerability this is a very nice quote by anna herringer an architect that
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works a lot with earth and i think it is a marks a very important point right we are there to improve what is the performance of earth of course but you also we also want earth to be
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what it is to be earth right um we have a lot of projects nowadays that are um being published and they use earth but they use earth
00:44:14
just as if it was concrete and in order to do that they add cement inside of the earth and this is a pity because at the moment where we add cements our earth wall
00:44:27
starts having the same cement uh content and uh uh then a concrete block and it loses all of its sustainable potential right the low embodied energy is gone the recyclability
00:44:40
um is also gone we really uh lose a bit the the path of why do we want to use earth this is of course my own personal opinion but i think uh
00:44:53
we can really take it as a challenge on one side and not just as a limitation and to see where um this vulnerability of earth i'm talking about the fact that
00:45:04
earth cannot be directly under the rain you can say here uh it is but normally if you have natural earth and you live it's just uh uncovered on its top face
00:45:18
uh the rain is going to penetrate inside of this wall and it's going to uh bring it back to mud it is recyclable for real this means it can happen during the
00:45:33
building life if we don't protect it um if you don't protect it adequately this doesn't mean we can't use earth of course if we have rain on the side face for instance this is not a problem we just need to
00:45:46
cover the top and the bottom of it but this is very important and maybe we just can use earth according to what it is and to do this
00:45:58
characteristic it has and see where it leads us maybe it will lead us to an architecture that doesn't look like concrete architecture maybe uh it can for instance here right the fact that
00:46:11
earth has to be protected beneath the roof but at the same time that earth can be a completely flexible material it led to a much more interesting architecture than if we just
00:46:23
had a straight uh concrete wall i think uh this kind of spaces are really peculiar to a material that is uh completely
00:46:37
flexible like earth seven earth is sensual and it's getting naked okay i want to stress the fact that
00:46:50
uh earth is a material that's really want to be touched i'm pretty sure if you passed uh in the ayak hall and you saw this 3d printed earthen models
00:47:04
and i'm sure you had the temptation of going to touch them it's a material that really uh since it's natural and it's it's so uh rough and it has
00:47:15
all of this um this texture and all these grains it's a material that really uh calls for uh contact uh to me it was a big challenge to uh
00:47:29
design a yoga center it was also very nice to have to think how a person experience architecture not just through the sights but also to the touch and to the to the
00:47:43
field and every type of people also and how would they feel when they would be surrounded on every side by by earth would it feel
00:47:54
like being underground would it feel warm uh to me it was uh it was really interesting to answer to this question and also to have the feedback of all of the users of
00:48:07
this space and of course i think earth is also a way to bring some uh some touch and some some texture and some nature
00:48:19
to places that normally are really um artificial and cold like for instance a cemetery or a hospital a healthcare center this place tends to be all
00:48:32
um clean and smooth and white and maybe adding the roughness and the texture and the naturality of earth can help us create different spaces for
00:48:45
these functions and as you can see another of my um concern as a as a designer which was about the fact that material are being concealed
00:48:58
i think earth gives also some interesting hints in this sense right we are turning more and more toward an architecture of materials where materials are the real luxury materials and
00:49:11
showing them is what really makes the quality of the space and in this game earth of course can really play its role
00:49:23
and eighth and last point earth is trending this is uh i think is a very strong point when we think of this material because maybe we will really
00:49:36
have the chance uh to have earth as the current building materials in the in the following uh in the next years let me
00:49:47
honest earth is not a new material it can be innovative to use it but we've been using it for quite long nowadays we're talking about yeah what 10 000 years and still i'm talking about the fact
00:50:03
that we've been here before not just here using earth but in this very very situation where we are now it was not so long ago it was in uh 1973 when it was
00:50:16
we had the first oil crisis and the first for the first time we realized that uh natural resources were not endless and that maybe our model of society and of consumption of
00:50:30
them was not uh sustainable for real and back then we already had the same uh shock and the same
00:50:41
reaction to this shock which was that uh institutions started uh to be interested in earth as a material that was local or uh with low embedded energy etc
00:50:56
and that's where at least i'm talking about france which is the the case i know uh the best that's when uh earthen buildings and public earthen buildings started being developed
00:51:08
you can see here the domaine de la terre this was a pilot project but actually the government releases an architectural competition for a whole
00:51:19
neighborhood actually a small village where all the best uh architect with the most renowned archetype they actually gave their answer and they built this neighborhood out of the
00:51:31
earth as a material together with the latest architectural design concepts of the 80s and it went incredibly well this neighborhood is still visited
00:51:44
nowadays people are still living there and they are quite happy about it as you can see the earth and parts are uh in great states uh we can't say the same about the concrete part but uh yeah this this uh
00:51:58
experiment this pilot project was a success so why why did it stop there why weren't there a follow-up of other communities and why didn't this become a current
00:52:10
building material well that's because the crisis stopped the oil prices went back to normality and we just went back to our bad old habits and still building with
00:52:23
the same not so sustainable materials well nowadays we are facing a second uh chance maybe to change our paradigm
00:52:34
our uh our model since we are uh we are seeing really the climate change uh around us and the the finnishness of resources and as you can see public and in general
00:52:48
earth and buildings are also the number is very slowly uh raising in france and all over europe so maybe this is the chance uh
00:53:00
[Music] big architecture star are starting using earth we have the priscar prizes wang shu uh renzo piano they are using earth in their projects
00:53:13
so this will of course change with the stages of this material and public buildings are really a very important trigger because when a public building is realized it means
00:53:25
all of the regulation has to give an answer about how to use this material um and in general it really uh changes the image of one material as
00:53:37
the material that really has a reason to be used uh we are facing a crisis as you know uh and following this crisis which was triggered by kobed
00:53:51
there are enormous um there is a very big rescue plan in europe that is going to uh bring an enormous amount of money and it has
00:54:03
sustainability as its first pillar its first goal will this mean we will have more occasion more more chances to uh use natural materials
00:54:16
in our projects i hope so but i think as designers we really have to be ready we really have to be prepared and to give answer to this um this global emergency
00:54:30
we are facing so i really hope i gave you some reason to uh to be interested in this material and maybe even to love it as i do
00:54:43
and i'm really uh glad to share all of this with you and i'm longing to um answer your your question if you have any so this is it thank you for your attention
00:55:00
well i think thank you so much it has been really wonderful i think you have been very clear and also that you have a very graphic about some of the key points you wanted to
00:55:11
to show and share with everyone now maybe i will ask you to stop sharing the screen so we can maybe give him students the opportunity to to ask some questions uh i'm sure i mean
00:55:24
they have uh i was in increasing order yeah we have had something some comments in chat but maybe first we can have people that want to to open their microphones and ask you something and
00:55:39
maybe uh let me share this okay great so who would like to make the first question presentation i can't go from you
00:55:53
oh fatima okay great hello elizabeth i am fatima from iran now studying and living in valor it is really nice to meet you
00:56:05
from the first day of arrival we start to explore valdora soil and clay with a group in valoro and we baked here soy this is super nice and actually we
00:56:19
start to set up uh ceramic workshops here in ballarat for next term and we went to uh otf final presentation last friday with a group of
00:56:31
students uh from van laar and i listened to your comments and i have so many questions from you so it would be nice if you have a time
00:56:43
to talk in a proper time about our actual proposal and we have written one business plan on our ceramic workshops so it would be nice
00:56:57
if we could hear your comments and our ideas yeah thank you uh yeah i got the this information by uh mika he he wrote me about that i
00:57:10
still have to answer but i definitely i definitely will and i really hope that you're starting using uh baldarasol we actually came to baldara with the videotape to start collecting soil
00:57:23
sample and starting studying what can be done with this with this earth and of course many things can be done we can't wait okay thank you thank you okay great
00:57:36
thank you father okay um [Music] can i go yeah sure i don't know who is
00:57:46
talking oh okay hello elisabeth representation um my question is in your experience
00:58:02
as a consultant and architect what are some of the biggest challenges you have faced when integrating this material into the practice and with which other material would you
00:58:15
say earth has the best dialogue in terms of joinery and tectonic nice nice question um what is the most difficult i would say
00:58:31
regulation because you can always give a reason for a higher price than conventional material or you can justify or you can find a solution for
00:58:45
technical issue but yeah regulation sometimes is an obstacle because uh sometimes it requires a lot of testing and it can be
00:58:56
um it can be a bit of a complication but of course as you saw although all the projects that i showed they they went through all of these paths and they managed to
00:59:09
uh to realize the project so it's not a blocking element but i would say it's an obstacle and oh which which material fits best with earth
00:59:21
well i think uh all of natural materials fit well because uh they in general they are softer it is complicated to join earth with with the material that is
00:59:33
very hard because of the of the deformation it might have due to moist changing etc uh and of course because it makes a lot of sense right you want to build with earth
00:59:47
you don't want to put uh i know asbestos together with it right you want you try to have an overall concept of what your material choices are there is by the way there is a a very
01:00:02
interesting uh architectural competition which is closing tomorrow uh which is called terrafibra award and it is combining uh earthen uh
01:00:13
and natural fiber projects so when we talk about natural fibers it's of course wood but also uh all of the other types of fibers so i think it is very interesting to say
01:00:25
the two categories together in just one prize and because there are many projects that are using both categories of materials okay thank you thank you thank you
01:00:38
and i now know marie matilda wants to ask you a question sure hi elizabeth thanks so much lecture how you doing um i
01:00:50
thought it was really interesting um the the comments you were making um on this this idea of the cultural image and how urban architecture is often associated as you were saying to let's
01:01:02
say a lower social class um and i was wondering if also thinking about your collaboration with the postgraduate in 3d printing architecture um what kind of role do you think maybe
01:01:15
new technologies or different ways of using earth within the architectural realm could play in sort of changing this image or potentially sort of upgrading i don't know if if that's the
01:01:27
right word but upgrading this image i think it can definitely have a very important role and you can see it well the example i was presenting was just about changing from one technique to another
01:01:40
one and it was already it was already effective and i think uh bringing in something like parametric architecture and fabrication and it will completely give a different
01:01:53
approach to to earth and materials okay great um i would like to jump to a couple of questions we have in chat one the first one is how high buildings
01:02:11
can be built with earth what's the biggest or highest building made from earth so far okay uh well the highest building we know
01:02:23
about are in in yemen and i'm talking about the city of shiban which was made of adobe quite a peculiar adobe uh
01:02:34
walls uh of course the the basement of these walls was very thick but they went up to uh 11 stories so uh this is the highest load-bearing uh earthen structure we know about
01:02:47
well in most recent time we know about some six story building in uh in germany in the 40s and yeah this is uh
01:02:58
more it is more easy to achieve this kind of result out of this particular culture they they was they developed back in the time in yemen
01:03:10
sure another let's say specific question is how does earth materials support ventilation and security in case of natural disasters
01:03:24
ventilation and security yeah like there are like two points in that in that question why it's about ventilation the relation with earth i suppose the thickness of walls and how are i able to to make poles and
01:03:37
windows these kinds of structures and the other ones should be related with security and natural disaster i should put earthquakes maybe fires or something like that okay
01:03:49
um well about ventilation ventilation is a design issue so it there is no problem in using earth nowadays there are even projects that has incredibly
01:04:01
large openings because they use some very thin steel element integrated in the in at the bottom of the earthen part in order to follow the the contemporary architecture
01:04:16
design needs so there is no problem at all to to have openings about natural disasters there is a whole branch of earth design which is the
01:04:28
seismic seismic resistant earth design many many solutions were developed so i would say it is definitely an interesting material for seismic regions and
01:04:43
chile is a is a region when this research is uh going on a lot since it's a very very high uh seismic risk region and it is also mostly built with earth so
01:04:57
there is there is a lot of research going on with that okay great now veronica is asking in terms of affordable housing in the context of
01:05:09
europe is earthing architectural viable well this is an interesting question as a quite complex one we are talking about comparing uh
01:05:26
the costs of building with earth with building with other materials right here we have two factors in our pricing model
01:05:39
what is not current uh it is normally more expensive right you can see this in biological food for instance you need to put less additives to biological
01:05:53
agriculture but it end up costing more because you will have a fewer production and it is not so current you don't have this economy uh scale so the price is higher
01:06:07
well a bit of the same happens in in earthen architecture since it's something that is not uh that's mainstream uh it its cost is not lowered by the but the
01:06:19
very massive production on one side and on the other side it depends a lot on the technique but for instance around earth uh even if it's prefabricated it still mean that there is somebody
01:06:30
here that is working in order to have to compact this earth even if it's done with mechanical engines it is still a person's time right
01:06:42
labor and nowadays in construction we have a ridiculous labor cost because most things come from very very far where actually labor cost uh is is really low
01:06:56
but uh earthen architecture or at least most techniques right right remnant earth or adobe implies that the labor cost of the the time of the person that has
01:07:08
been working in this is embedded in our earthen material and this makes its uh makes its its value and also its cost higher than the standard construction material so
01:07:22
these are the reason why if you just look at the final cost of a building building with earth is not going to be cheaper unless you build it yourself which is a possibility as i showed you
01:07:35
in this student houses but also in self self-built houses which are uh quite a large share of earth and architecture nowadays
01:07:47
so besides that uh many social housing projects were done with with with earth because being a sustainable material it the the different cost is a counterbalance by the interests
01:08:02
right of the public sector to use natural materials so it can be suitable for this kind of projects yeah i think as you said the beginning is a very complex question it has
01:08:14
very different spaces around the situation of problem pricing yes maybe money could you read your question please even your english is much better than
01:08:27
mine oh i was um thank you so much elizabeth that was a wonderful and super inspiring uh lecture um i do believe you kind of just touched on the answer a little bit i was curious
01:08:40
about the differences between the labor commitments um and requirements uh for earthen building versus a standard construction because i've often heard that it's more expensive in the labor and that's
01:08:52
why it's such a deterrent um and i just thought if if you could comment on that at all but you i think you already just sort of did as well so maybe just elaborate if you like yeah about labor definitely and about
01:09:05
regulation yeah it is uh it is slowly getting um appearing in the national regulation and international regulation but we are
01:09:17
we are still way beyond it is still considered as an uh as an experimental material in many countries which is quite crazy if you think that we are using it for 10 000 years but we still
01:09:28
need to prove it as if it were building with some completely new experimental material the only technique that is uh pretty much under regulation is the compressed earth
01:09:41
blocks so the bricks that are made by compression and not the adobe those are have norms here in spain for instance and in many other countries
01:09:54
uh in general one big problem with earth is that it is a material that is uh different everywhere in the world of course wherever you go and dig you will have a different earth so
01:10:07
being a non-homogeneous and non-standard material make it makes it even a bit more difficult to have regulations but the main obstacle is really
01:10:19
the wheel and the dynamic of having this material regulated perfect thank you and we have well we have several questions maybe now kevin can you go please with your question
01:10:34
hello thank you for your lecture um i really appreciate how you began your talk and your journey and earth construction with these interviews of workers i wonder
01:10:48
what did you learn from them and how has it guided your practice thank you well it was it was an enormous uh learning right because i really got
01:11:01
the behind the scene version of all of these projects right when you seen in a magazine you don't really understand how hard it was or what maybe went wrong or what they would have done
01:11:14
uh differently um to me it was it was very important both to learn really tactics and how they you could actually for instance how can you overcome
01:11:25
all of the um regulation obstacles uh they actually developed some strategies in order to do that or even on a technical level right sometimes they just had
01:11:38
an idea that that was wrong and they they had to catch up with it because they are really most of this credit were quite innovative they were pioneers they didn't have really a lot of feedback of other projects so this is
01:11:52
why they're really learned by uh their mistakes sometimes and that i think it was the most interesting part the other part that i think was very uh valuable about all of these interviews was
01:12:03
their why right even if sometimes it was super complicated and it took a lot of time and money everyone was really uh proud and happy about having built something with earth and
01:12:16
and that was also really uh meaningful to me and i started realizing that really this material was i don't know moving something and touching something inside uh people that's um that was special
01:12:29
that was the idea of really doing something in a way that felt better for them thank you um i will read another order of the questions in chat it says i would like to ask if
01:12:45
the earth has been has to be clean to be used in a building in north of france and in belgium there are a lot of polluted earth because of the mining of coal
01:12:57
in the past that have it has to be clean when we do a building on a polluted place is the polluted earth worth enough to build a house and avoid
01:13:08
health issues well this is a this is a very interesting question i think it definitely depends on the type of pollution that we are talking about right if we are talking about
01:13:23
excavated earth that might have some um pieces of other buildings inside and that would give no emissions i would say it can be used but of course if you are
01:13:36
talking about chemical uh pollution and contamination it has to be uh treated in order to be used but because it will be really uh in
01:13:47
in contact with the indoor space so it is if it is uh this type of heavy chemical pollution i would i wouldn't use it in um in directly in construction
01:13:59
it would be uh treated firstly but i think it really we are really talking about uh former industrial sites right uh if you're talking just about normal sites uh even our the
01:14:13
pollution all of the pollution we have in our uh water um flows that doesn't affect uh earth in a in a bad way so that it can be used anymore we're really talking
01:14:26
about former industrial sites great now esme is asking i would like to ask something about one of the slides i miss the name of the technology of the studio that students could practice on a hybrid
01:14:42
system with timber frame and earth could you please repeat you mentioned that it will it could be disassembled i do work on the design for disassembly and i will
01:14:54
i would like to search for the system in more detail okay uh i'm going to write it in the chat is that right fabio oh yeah for sure so i'm going to write it here so the
01:15:08
prototype was called terra nostra i sorry i have my
01:15:25
it was by um uh anthock grenoble school of architecture in 2016. uh
01:15:40
i'm also leaving you my my email so that if you are any question about earth i would be glad to see that with you thank you thank you very much
01:15:52
i i definitely will you can stalk me thank you esther um sunny is is asking i want to ask how important you think it is to look into additive
01:16:08
non-non-salmons to improve the strength strength of the soil is there a lot of research into this going on globally or would it be more important to focus on improving
01:16:21
the method of construction for the material as it is well of course using the material as it is is the most what makes more sense to me but of course there is also a research
01:16:37
going on about natural additives or additives that are not affecting recyclability uh it is most for techniques that are wet techniques that have a lot of water inside in order to reduce the amount of water
01:16:50
that we need to work with the material and therefore to improve the the final the final performance of the material uh but for instance rounders
01:17:04
um we don't get that much uh by stabilizing it the very the main point is uh water resistance right the the performance we have toward water
01:17:18
but this maybe uh it is smarter to be achieved just with some coating or with some coating adjectives there is a huge research about the natural additives that are traditionally used
01:17:30
all over the world in order to coat um earth in order to make it more resistant towards the weather i think uh this kind of resources are what are
01:17:41
more interesting in my opinion but yeah there are there are many others there are about tannins about biopolymers there are there are really a lot of a
01:17:59
lot of research about additives that we can use in different techniques of course right okay we'll go with with a new another one maybe one of the last one or the last one because we don't have much
01:18:13
time left it says olivier it says my questions my question is the following and maybe a very kind of canadian one
01:18:24
do you know any projects experiments or attempts of building with earth in other territories depending of the region here in quebec we have thermal differential of around 80
01:18:36
degrees celsius celsius annually making insulation envelopes ceiling and water repelling construction techniques very serious problematic so the question is whether i know any
01:18:53
project in quebec another that he says in the northern territories in the northern territories well actually earth was a traditional
01:19:05
[Music] building material in in northern europe i don't know that much about kovac but for instance in scandinavia it was used in northern um
01:19:18
in uk in ireland i mean even in climate that has some some important temperature difference uh i don't know about quebec but i'm definitely going to look it up
01:19:32
and yeah i mean earth can be used uh as a building material even in in severe climates we will need to uh have some thermal insulation in our in our
01:19:44
concept of course but there is no reason why it shouldn't be used okay great christopher says can infertilized soil be used as a construction material
01:19:58
in fertilizer you mean non-organic just mineral yes this is actually what we look for when we are uh searching for earth uh for building uh we don't want to use the organic part
01:20:11
the first layer of earth the most superficial layer of of the ground we don't want to use it on one side because it would bring some life inside of our building and we don't want that right we don't
01:20:23
want to have plants growing in our in our building but on the other hand it's also because it is a very valuable material the the humans the
01:20:35
organic earth we have on on top of the ground is the material that is able to really give birth to plants and that's what we want to keep for every culture and not use for buildings
01:20:49
great great thank you well we don't have much much time left uh lisa also share with you your email so you can send her your questions later because there are some questions around
01:21:02
and now before before closing the lecture i know we sent i want to add something i'm yeah lisa thank you for your wonderful letter yeah and i'm sure our students are
01:21:22
very enthusiastic about your work uh you know we we are working a lot with wood as a renewable material uh what i think is great but then some
01:21:36
of the questions that students from uh iran from morocco or from some other parts of the world where there are no good they say
01:21:46
and what about us no so the question is if earth can be as it was i mean i was in some of these uh villages in in morocco with incredible
01:21:59
construction with earth the question is if earth can be to these countries the equivalent to what food is to other countries that they have boot that used to be the material in the past
01:22:12
and now has been somehow industrialized in order to reinvent the way we work with it no so well this is just a question i want to keep open because i would like to explore with you
01:22:25
in the in the near future how we can uh deal about this you know in baidora we have we used to have a brick factory so that means that there is a very good earth because many bricks that are in baidabra themselves
01:22:38
were produced there and then this is uh i know that also some of the 3d printing we're doing at the ag was done with using earth from baidabra and i think that this is a very interesting topic to continue exploring
01:22:50
with you so maybe we would like to invite you to come in the next few weeks uh yeah our situation is a bit better and uh yeah we can we can talk about this yeah
01:23:02
i would be really glad to do it i fell in love with baldara when i when i came to dig earth exactly and i i would really really glad to uh to come back and to explore the possibilities of the earth you have
01:23:15
there i've seen you have different types of so there there is a lot to be said good so thank you very much and thank you uh very much to everyone that joined
01:23:26
joining us have you you can close eh yeah sure there is not much more to say we i think everyone is fascinated with elizabetha's lecture and everyone is very interested so we are going to have for sure several
01:23:41
conversations in the future and thank you again for your time and your wonderful presentation you and thank you to all of the 150 people who attended i'm really
01:23:52
glad to be able to share this my passion for earth with so many young designers thank you good evening everyone good evening bye
End of transcript