Adobe Architecture

The basic building materials, which can easily be reached, used for the construction of
buildings have been natural materials since the first house built by humans to shelter in the
world. Among this materials soil is the most commonly used. Adobe architectural heritage
that has been formed with soil has been used for many different and various building
cultures in all around the world for many centuries, nowadays has been lost day by day.
The number of researches have been increased in the world about conservation of adobe
architectural heritage and contemporary usage opportunities as a sustainable material by
reinforcing weak properties of the material caused by its nature. Traditional architectural
heritage of Anatolia has been disappearing each passing day due to lack of awareness
about conservation and mostly abandonment of buildings in small towns and rural areas.
It is known that continuous maintenance is required for traditional buildings constructed
with natural materials as stone, wood or earth, like living organisms. As if it hasn’t been
done, the process has been resulted neglection and becoming a ruin of cultural properties.
Deterioration mechanisms that affect natural building materials in traditional architecture
are similar for adobe architecture, but effects faster than the other buildings. This paper
aims to provide analysis about development process of adobe architecture in Anatolia that
used for many centuries as in the world, forms of production and usage, and current
conservation problems.

The usage of adobe material in construction in nowadays has been limited. The
material has been proven to be sustainable construction materials in terms of
economy, structural strength and thermal comfort. In Nigeria, the usage of adobe
material is very dominant especially in areas where there is shortage of
constructional materials and limited access to the modern building techniques and
materials. However, the locally available material had suffered a great deal of
misusage in terms of construction know-how and standardization of buildings
guides/codes. Absence of adobe building standard had contributed to this problem
across the country. This research uses Turkish adobe building standards to compare
among other countries. Turkey happened to be having a more comprehensive
standard which was used in comparison with existing adobe buildings specifications
in Northern Nigeria. The area of focus for the comparison is the CI/SfB Construction
Indexing Manual; structure and sub structure category of buildings elements. At the
end of the research, several problems were identified which they were the most
challenging factors hindering the sustainability of adobe building in Northern
Nigeria. Therefore, recommendations of building dimensions and techniques were
outlined especially in regards to foundation and wall which were identified to be the
weak link of adobe buildings in Northern Nigeria.

Keywords: Adobe Material, Turkish Standard, Northern Nigeria, Turkey.

Doğal kaynakların sürdürülebilir yöntemlerle değerlendirilmesini amaçlayan ve günümüzün sağladığı olanaklarla desteklenip geliştirilen toprağa dayalı yapım sistemleri, önemli ekolojik ve ekonomik avantajlar sağlamaktadır. Yaşadığımız dönemde, bir yandan çevre sorunları, etkin enerji kullanımı gereksinimleri, sağlıklı ve konforlu yaşam istekleri, diğer yandan ekonomik açıdan sürdürülebilir inşaat yöntemi arayışları toprak yapı konusunu güncelleştirdi. Bugün dünyanın hemen her ülkesinde toprak yapıları iyileştirmeyi ve geliştirmeyi amaçlayan çalışmalar yürütülmekte iken, çok ileri düzeyde geleneksel toprak yapı teknolojisine ve kültürüne sahip olan Türkiye’de bu yöndeki çalışmaların kısıtlı kaldığını söyleyebiliriz. Bu kitap, gerek bireysel projeler bağlamında, gerekse de ülkemizde konut sorununa bir çözüm yöntemi olarak, toprağa dayalı, küçükölçekte ve yerel kaynaklara bağlı mimarlık pratiklerini önceleyen bir yapı modeli önermektedir. Çağdaş Yapı Malzemesi Toprak ve Alker, toprak yapı malzemesi ve teknolojisi konusundaki bilgi birikiminin kapsamlı bir sunumunu içeriyor. Aynı zamanda, yapım aşamasında ve kullanım sürecinde olabildiğince az enerji tüketen, çevre kirliliği yaratmayan, yapay donatı gerektirmeden sağlıklı yaşam koşullarını kendi bünyesinde gerçekleştiren bir malzeme olan Alker’in (alçı ve kireçle stabilize edilen toprak) mekanik ve fiziksel niteliklerini belirleyen deneylerin sonuçlarını sunuyor; üretimi ve inşaat süreci konusundaki araştırma ve deneyimlerimizi bütünlüklü olarak ortaya koyuyor.
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Earthen building technologies that introduce novel interpretations of traditional building methods provide significant ecological and economical advantages. They offer possibilities for the sustainable use of natural resources, and for the development of appropriate building technologies that favor small scale, energy-efficient, and environmentally sound architectural practices utilizing local resources. Behind the current rise of interest in earthen building technologies in various areas of the world are increasingly visible environmental concerns, requirements for efficient energy use, and the desire for creating healthy and comfortable living environments. While earthen building has emerged as a topic of research in diverse academic environments, in Turkey, a country with a rooted tradition of adobe construction, the topic has attracted relatively less attention.

This book offers a model for sustainable architecture based on earthen building. It offers a comprehensive overview of the use of earth as a building material, detailing historical and contemporary earthen building technologies, methods of construction-oriented soil selection, and techniques of erosion resistant soil stabilization. At the same time, it presents the first book-length treatment of Alker, produced by the addition of gypsum, lime, and water to earth with the appropriate granulometric structure and with a cohesive property. Unbaked and produced on-site either as adobe blocks or by the rammed earth technique, it offers important economical and environmental advantages, and has been used in a number of small and middle-sized projects in various locations in Turkey. Alker is characterized by its quick setting time, hence preventing clay shrinkage and eliminating the need for curing and drying processes. Unlike traditional unbaked earthen building materials, it exhibits high resistance to water-related erosion. Çağdaş Yapı Malzemesi Toprak ve Alker details the investigations on the mechanical and physical properties of this building material, and presents the research and experiments on its production and its use in construction.

Ramses Wissa Wassef, born in Cairo on November 11, 1911, a pioneer in art, architecture and education in modern Egypt, was also a humanist.  The family's interest in the arts obviously greatly influenced the young Ramses, because his life-long philosophy was: "One cannot separate beauty from utility, the form from the material, the work from its function, [and] man from his creative art."

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary case study of Spanish mission architecture and material culture among Pueblo Indian communities of Early Modern New Mexico. The domestic quarters (conventos) of seventeenth-century missions were intimate arenas of encounter
and cultural negotiation, where Native American laborers lived and worked with Franciscan friars, comprising heterogeneous mission communities. Missionaries established the Purísima Concepción outside the Zuni town of Hawikku (Hawikuh) Pueblo in 1629, where it was destroyed in a 1672 Apache raid. In 1919, Frederick Webb Hodge and Jesse L. Nusbaum of the Hendricks-Hodge Archaeological Expedition excavated the ruins, producing collections which
eventually become part of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) but remain largely unpublished. As one of the few systematically excavated seventeenth-century New Mexico missions, the Purísima Concepción is a vital resource for understanding everyday mission life.

Interpreting the Purísima Concepción’s archaeological remains with primary sources, Zuni oral traditions, and comparative analysis, this dissertation reconstructs the everyday built environment of Hawikku’s convento, rich with materials of labor and cultural concepts of gender. The cloister design at the adobe mission’s core was an architectural form with monastic and vernacular precedents, which missionaries employed as an architectural rhetorical statement communicating aspirations of orderly acculturation. In contrast, artifacts related to everyday culinary practices of food preparation and consumption mixed cultural traditions, manifesting Native agency, Pueblo cosmology, and the overlooked role of women in shaping mission community experiences. Through Native participants and material culture such as culturally hybrid ceramics including soup plates, candle holders, and a unique salt cellar made by Zuni and Hopi artists (sometimes described as colonowares), Pueblo concepts of gender and cosmology interpenetrated the missionaries’ patriarchal Christianity. The result was a hybrid environment combining both Spanish and Pueblo cultural systems.

Focusing on intercultural relations, everyday life, and Indigenous agency, this dissertation explores a particular example of the multi-vocality of art’s history in the Americas. It shifts scholarly attention from mission churches and Spanish colonial power, to the domestic spaces of conventos and the meaning of missions as rhetorical constructions negotiated among participants of the mission community.

NOT:
Bu çalışma Alker üzerine yapılan ilk araştırmanın raporudur. Bu çalışmada uygun nitelikli toprağa yalnızca alçı eklenerek sonuç elde edilmiştir. Daha sonra yapılan araştırmalarda alçı ile birlikte kireç eklenmesinin malzemenin deprem direncini arttırdığı görülmüştür. Alçı ve kireç eki ile geliştirilen malzeme için bu academia sayfasındaki "Improved performance of earth structures by lime and gypsum addition" başlıklı makaleye bakınız.

This is the initial research project report for Alker, dated 1980. At this time, Alker was produced with the addition only of gypsum to earth with the appropriate qualities. The addition of lime alongside gypsum was introduced later, and improved the material's earthquake-resistant properties. For a presentation of the latest findings, see the article "Improved performance of earth structures by lime and gypsum addition", on this academia page.

Like an organism sitting and breathing on its site in the Chihuahuan desert, the Swan House is a building of organic beauty and hybrid cultural intelligence. Simone Swan has created an architectural and environmental project that re-examines and promotes traditional adobe building while introducing compatible forms, such as the Nubian vault and dome. Swan studied with the great Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy, in his Cairo studio and after his death in 1989 adopted his mission of helping house the world’s poor. Simone Swan: Adobe Building is the first book to discuss and illustrate Swan’s architecture while also chronicling one of her annual workshops in Dollens’s first-hand account. Dollens suggests that by biologically analyzing historic adobe we may be able to hybridize its constituents as replacements for current toxic materials, creating new biomimetic, adobe-related building materials suitable for green architecture.

El descubrimiento inesperado y excepcional de las pinturas murales del Edificio B15 en Pachacamac ha planteado un caso de conservación complejo debido al estado de conservación precario de la mayoría de los enlucidos de tierra, a las características ambientales del sitio arqueológico y a la urgencia de la intervención. Hemos adoptado
medidas de conservación preventiva durante la excavación para proteger los muros de los agentes ambientales, principal causa de alteración. Las medidas de conservación curativa han consistido en la consolidación de los bordes de los enlucidos y la readhesión de las
capas desprendidas humedeciendo la superficie y aplicando una leve presión. Sin embargo, este caso ha puesto en evidencia que el aporte de agua puede acelerar el deterioro y resultar en una pérdida de la capa pictórica. En estos casos puntuales, hemos vuelto a adherir las capas por presión y hemos procedido al recubrimiento y reentierro. Nos hemos decantado por esta mínima intervención ante las dudas del éxito de una consolidación superficial o del strappo. Esperamos poder evaluar el estado de conservación de los enlucidos pintados durante la próxima temporada de excavaciones.

The main aim of this paper is to present the design principles and analyse the constructional elements of the traditional adobe architecture in NW Greece. These buildings were mainly constructed by Macedonian master builders during the 18th and the 19th century, at a period when this area formed part of the Ottoman Empire. The objective of the overall analysis is to document the local traditional adobe construction systems in order to contribute to the restoration of this important architectural heritage. The study is mainly based on a large-scale in-situ research, which included various field trips, and involved the detailed photographic recording of the remaining traditional buildings in 30 settlements. The research included the documentation of representative buildings in some of the settlements. From all the above, the analysis of basic structural elements and different construction systems is derived. This analysis includes the presentation of three different traditional systems of building adobe walls (a. walls including wooden posts, b. walls with only horizontal wooden ties and c. light timber frame walls). From the collected data, conclusions concerning the typology, the form, the construction techniques and the materials of the buildings are drawn. This leads to the formulation of a series of design principles, which characterised the architecture of the past and can be applied as guidelines for the restoration of existing buildings, as well as for the construction of new ones.

With the support of This publication is the result of Terra [In]cognita-Earthen Architecture in Europe research project, developed in the framework of Culture 2007-2013 Programme of the European Union. This project has been funded with the support of the European Commission. This publication refl ects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein.

With the support of This publication is the result of Terra [In]cognita-Earthen Architecture in Europe research project, developed in the framework of Culture 2007-2013 Programme of the European Union. This project has been funded with the support of the European Commission. This publication refl ects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein.

Speaking about the "City of the orient" SUAKIN in the state of Sudan which can be presented as a sample of a Historical city built by Earthen construction which most of the existing buildings needs preservation, Suakin is the primary significance of this paper, where we should take into consideration of Earthen Architecture is a feasible, affordable, durable, cost-effective, environmentally friendly construction method which can be promoted as new architecture Life style for an Orient city which this study will re-purposing the function of each restorted building in a way to make it more modernized as today life style. After restoring this building, we can use the them as the following: Suakin is a port city on the Red sea coast of the Sudan state built between the 16 th and 20 th centuries under both the Ottoman and the Egyptian influence, Suakin is located nearly opposite Jeddah-Saudi Arabia and many of its architects were Hedjaz's, who emulated the Jeddah style. Suakin had two districts, Geif (alongside the coat) and the Gezira (the island) which is a flat oval-shaped island, about 750m long and less than 500m. Suakin as a city which can be presented as a new life style method, where its Earthen Architecture reflects a 500 years of architectural tradition identified Egyptian-Ottoman and Hijazi's Architecture and used in either primitive cultures since 1500 AD, the among all the important historical civilizations across African eastern coast. Examining historical paradigms (use of wood, stone, thatch and earth as architectural material) offers us therefore an insight into how we can re-employ the architectural know how in a way that is fully adapted to the particularities of each locality and habitat, while facilitating and improving the construction process thanks to modern technologies. Furthermore, Studying Old city of SUAKIN-Africa as an example of Earthen Architecture-New life style in project of restoration the entire city that have been carried out in different aspects and provides us with the most convincing argument as regards the need for an extensive use of Earthen Architecture-new life style as an environmentally friendly, sustainable and cost-efficient alternative.

In a strictly confined area stretching from the south-western reaches of Lārestān to adjacent territories in mainland Hormozgān, a peculiar type of stylized vegetal and geometric decoration finds widespread use for embellishing local mosques, shrines and mausolea. Executed
in a combination of painting and relief carving and often applied both externally and in interiors, the most common basic unit of the design is a medallion which features dynamic compositions of multi-lobed leaves, bunches sprouting from a vase, false window tracery, or radiating solar discs. These carved motifs stand proud of their background and often develop three-dimensional volumes, especially on façades. In many cases these roundels constitute larger ensembles framed by blind arcades or stucco niches, and there are further examples in
which only certain elements of the aforesaid repertoire are present, building up a modified variant of this basic composition. The standard technique employed is lime carving (āhakborī) which is commonly found in southern Iranian architectural decoration. While the style
may be considered an indigenous phenomenon characteristic of this part of Iran, a more extensive investigation reveals its possible connections with areas beyond the Persian Gulf.
The paper examines the origin, stylistic variants, and possible meaning of this hitherto rarely discussed decorative network.

This was an initial report on a salvage archaeology effort to record architectural details of an adobe brick roomblock at Fourmile Ruin as the site was being pillaged by corporate investors. Research indicated that prehispanic adobe brick architecture had roots in the traditions of the Four Corner region to the north.  A preliminary construction sequence for the roomblock was derived from the analysis of four distinct data sets: bond and abutment patterns, foundation types, stone masonry wall-face characteristics and Munsell color values for the bricks and the mortar between them. This roomblock, a linear alignment of adobe brick rooms, was associated with a high frequency of Salado ceramics, suggesting that the adobe brick architecture was associated with migration processes. Further discoveries of substantial adobe brick construction units at Homolovi (Johnson, 1990) and Marianna Mesa (McGimsey, 1980) indicate that there were traditions of adobe brick construction in the Hopi and Zuni regions prior to Spanish contact.

La région du Nord de la Grèce, que l’on situe entre la rive orientale du golfe Thermaïque et l’embouchure de l’Évros, est riche en fortifications grecques antiques, ce qui permet d’observer plusieurs particularités architecturales. Parmi celles-ci, l’utilisation de l’adobe dans la construction des remparts est intéressante. Cette communication a donc pour objectif de présenter et de comparer les différentes fortifications en brique crue du nord de la Grèce, dont celle d’Argilos demeure un exemple caractéristique de ce type de défense. (sous presse)

Adobe masonry is part of the vernacular architecture of Cyprus. Thus, it is possible to use this technology in a meaningful way on the island. On the other hand, although adobe architecture is more sustainable in comparison to other building technologies, the use of it is diminishing in North Cyprus. The application of Turkish building code in the north of the island has created complications in respect of the use of adobe masonry, because this building code demands that reinforced concrete vertical tie-beams are used together with adobe masonry. The use of reinforced concrete elements together with adobe masonry causes problems in relation to the climatic response of the building as well as causing other technical and aesthetic problems. This situation makes the design of adobe masonry complicated and various types of ethical problems also emerge. The objective of this article is to analyse the ethical problems which arise as a consequence of the restrictive character of the building code, by analysing two case studies and conducting an interview with an architect who was involved with the use of adobe masonry in North Cyprus. According to the results of this article there are ethical problems at various levels in the design of both case studies. These problems are connected to the responsibilities of architects in respect of the social benefit, material production, aesthetics and affordability of the architecture as well as

Intangible values of building culture mainly express cultural expressions embodied in traditional
craftsmanship which has mostly carried out by the local master builders and transmitted from
generation to generation throughout tradition. Of these expressions, beside the knowledge, knowhow
and the skills of builders, there are also specific practices related to local building tradition
carried out by local people and the shared meanings attributed to them. The specificity of building
culture of contexts is mainly sourced from these hidden meanings. These intangible values carried
in the minds of the builders through local building tradition are embodied in the architectural
language of historic environments.
The knowledge and practices that have continued in local building tradition in the rural settlements
of Anatolia are a significant part of intangible cultural heritage. For the conservation of intangible
cultural heritage, the documentation and the continuity of practices by practitioners, namely, local
building craftsmen, is a most significant requirement. The documentation and transmission of
know-how, skills, techniques and methods of the masters as the practitioners of the building
tradition is compulsory for the continuity of tradition.
Konya’s earthen building culture is so specific as the embodiments of both the activities,
knowledge and know-how of local building masters on mud-brick construction techniques; and the
practices of maintenance, renewal and ornamentation of traditional buildings carried out by
women. This study aims to investigate the intangible values of Konya’s earthen building culture
considering their interrelations with tangible values to develop a holistic conservation approach. As
the method of study, the data obtained from the architectural surveys of the traditional buildings,
observations, photographic documentation, and the in-depth interviews carried out with peasant
women, building masters and local authorities carried out in July 2017 and September 2018 during
the site surveys in Çavuş and Değirmenaltı Villages in Hüyük, Sarayönü and Kadınhanı will be
evaluated.