MUDOBE IS BEAUTIFUL!

Vernacular African Architecture

MUDOBE

Goals of the Project
An unique style of Africa Architecture already exists. This should be documented and integrated into all levels of African architecture- even the urban ones. The use of traditional techniques and materials should be encouraged not discouraged..

Vernacular Architecture in Africa has been vanishing in recent years. In West Africa, as well as the rest of Africa, western materials and construction techniques are rapidly replacing traditional ones. This is true even in the most remote areas Modern methods are seen as “civilized” and a reflection of affluence. Traditional materials and construction techniques have implications of being substandard or “primitive”. As a result, these techniques are not being passed on to future generations. In just a few generations, this part of Africa culture could be only a memory. Documenting these structures and techniques and understanding why these traditional architectural relations work is the goal of this project. A second goal is to demonstrate that traditional materials have the strength, comfort and beauty of modern applications. A change in perception has the potential of supporting a vernacular architecture. Indigenous materials: Why is this important? By using materials which are native to the area, it will reduce

By using materials which are native to the area, it will reduce the use of more expensive imported materials. More importantly, vernacular materials are part of cultural manifestations. The question is raised: if a system works well enough, why should it be changed by outside influences which may not be fully understood?
The development of towns introduced modern materials. These materials and construction techniques have slowly made their way even in the most remote villages.

MUDOBE MOSQUE

 

 The mud mosque in Djenne, Mali

The great mosque of Djenne in Mali is one of those buildings that haunted my boyhood imagination. It never seemed real, more a surrealist fairy-tale illustration. Even when I got to visit it some five years ago (after it was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site) and found it fronted by a busy market and surrounded by buses, I still found it hard to believe. Here, somehow, was a composite of the spirit of Sahara, surrealism and even a touch of Spain – Dali, Gaudi – mixed up in walls like termites’ nests, made of west African mud. It seemed at once a sort of natural outcrop of the muddy sandbanks of the nearby River Niger, a structure built by some desert spirit and, inevitably, a place of profound and ancient worship, older than Mohammed, older than Christ.

The mosque’s riddles have partly been solved in the pages of a new book by James Morris, the photographer, and Suzanne Preston Blier, professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard. Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa is a well-researched and beautifully presented study of the sculptural mud architecture of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso. Far from being the work of nameless desert djinns (local spirits or “genies”), these often beautiful buildings were designed and built by architects for kings and emperors, making the best of local materials and know-how.

Some of those architects were slaves. And one, at least, was Spanish. Abu Ishaq al-Sahili (c1290-1346), poet, lawyer and notary, was born and educated in Granada. He became architect to Mansa Kanku Musa, 14th-century emperor of Mali, who began a major building programme in about 1325 that culminated in the Djinguerber mosque, Timbuktu. The emperor is celebrated in a Catalonian map of 1375. “This negro lord,” says the legend accompanying his portrait, “is called Musa of Mali, Lord of the Negroes of Guinea. So abundant is the gold which is found in his country that he is the richest and noblest king in all that land.”

The Timbuktu mosque, like the Djenne mosque, has survived, at least in part – a fact that seems all the more remarkable given that these sensational buildings are constructed from mud. Each year, in gloriously splashy festivals, their walls are repaired and the ancient buildings live on. Far from being a wobbly material guaranteed to wash away, mud, as Blier is keen to point out, has an enduring life of its own. Here are buildings that are at once organic, animated and, if local traditions survive modernisation, almost eternal.

Even if they crumble, the buildings can be raised up again without too much strain. The existing Djenne mosque, for example, is barely a century old. The original, dating from the 13th or 14th century, was deliberately allowed to collapse during the jihad of Sheikh Amadu in the 1830s. The architect Ismaila Traore was paid by the French, who had taken control of Mali in 1893, to rebuild the mosque. Although it is traditional in many ways, its symmetrical, almost rational planning shows a certain degree of French influence; quite how much remains unclear.

The mosque is built on a platform of regular sun-dried mud bricks. The walls are between 16 and 24 inches thick. These allow the interior of the mosque, the world’s biggest mud building, to stay cool throughout the day, which is some achievement considering that, outdoors, summer temperatures reach 50C. The palm beams sticking out from the walls serve as structural supports and as permanent scaffolding to bear timber platforms used for repairing and replastering the building with a mix of mud and rice husks each year.

What these magnificent mosques prove is that mud buildings can be far more sophisticated than many people living in a world of concrete and steel might want to believe. Mud is not just a material for shaping pots, but for temples, palaces and even, as so many west African towns demonstrate, the framing of entire communities. The very fluidity, or viscosity, of the material allows the architects who use it to create dynamic and sensual forms.

Morris’s photographic trips through the region in 1999 and 2000 record a world of architecture that, sadly, is increasingly under threat. Perhaps it is mostly poverty rather than culture and memory that keeps this rich and inventive tradition of building alive. The tendency in this part of the world, as in any other, is to move from naturally elegant traditional buildings to fast-buck junk.

Morris’s lens all but caresses the buildings it focuses on. Walls resemble elephant hides, or adopt esoteric geometries. Many of the buildings appear to have been conjured rather than built laboriously by hand. On close inspection – and Morris’s camera allows us to get very close – it is fascinating to experience the way in which the interiors and exteriors of these buildings flow one into the other, to feel the mood of the buildings change as light and shadow shift through the course of the day. Intriguing, too, to understand how the mud architects of west Africa made, and continue to make, a play of primary geometries just as those working in the Graeco-Roman and modern tradition did and do. And, finally, it is possible, with a keen eye, to imagine how the designs of these buildings flowed into the southern European consciousness – in particular, the Spanish experience.

Will this special architecture survive? Probably – at least for the time being, while these countries remain poor and off the beaten track. But in the long term? Fingers crossed. It does, perhaps, take anyone brought up in Europe some little while to learn to appreciate the inherent strength and magic of the adobe architecture of west Africa. Morris and Blier are excellent guides for the uninitiated.

· Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa by James Morris and Suzanne Preston Blier is published by Princeton Architectural Press, price £35.

· James Morris: Butabu is at the Zelda Cheatle Gallery, London W1, from tomorrow. Details:               020-7408 4448       .

Showcase

http://s684.photobucket.com/albums/vv203/MUDOBE/?albumview=slideshow

Adobe Plaster

The traditional use of mud plasters and renders to coat and protect walls dates back a very long time and is found in almost all regions of the world.  Finishing a house with mud plaster when the house itself has been built with earth is a natural, complementary technique, but mud plasters can also be used for buildings of stone and fired brick provided they incorporate an earth-based mortar for the joints.

Earth-based plasters often use earth in combination with other natural materials such as wheat straw or cow dung, or with mineral additives such as bitumen, to improve the basic qualities of the earth by acting as stabilisers, hardeners, and waterproofers.  Even without additives, however, mud plasters and renders can give excellent results provided that they are made and applied with skill and care, and maintained regularly.  Today, with low-cost mass housing a priority and with the increasing interest in the preservation of architectural heritage, the need for plastering materials which are efficient and economical has awakened a new interest in earth. Earth-based plasters are completely compatible with traditional materials and building techniques, and the almost universal availability of suitable earth for building gives them a distinct advantage over some modern synthetic plasters.
 

Figure 1: Walls built using traditional methods, such as cob, are very suitable for mud rendering.
(Download the full PDF version to see this picture.)

Fundamental properties
The need for a plaster and the type of plaster that should be used depends particularly on the method of construction and quality of construction.  The provision of adequate footings, basements, eaves, and overhangs to a roof can in certain circumstances eliminate the need for a plaster coating altogether.  As plastering can amount to 15 to 20 per cent of the total cost of a house, its benefits need to be considered relative to alternative options.

In general, except in the case of highly exposed walls in areas of heavy rain, a plaster should protect against wind, rain, knocks and abrasion, and should improve the thermal insulation and appearance of a wall.  At the same time it has to be easy to apply without requiring expensive and elaborate tools, and must be affordable. All types of mud plasters, but especially those on external surfaces, need to offer erosion resistance, impermeability to moisture, and impact resistance, and be well bonded to the wall.

Erosion resistance
The main cause of erosion is heavy rain, and high winds driving the rain hard onto walls at an angle will increase erosion further still.  Heavy rain, even for a short time, is much more damaging than prolonged light rain.  A knowledge of local weather patterns and an analysis of meteorological data can give an indication of erosion risk and hence appropriate plastering materials and methods. It is advisable to study local traditional buildings and practices, as their evolution will have been influenced by the local climate.

Impact resistance
The durability of mud plasters depends on their ability to withstand the impact of humans and animals by bumping, scratching, or scraping.  Impact resistance is closely linked with the quality of the plaster, which is determined by its density, methods of application, number of coats used, and maintenance practices.  The texture of the plaster is also important.

Good bonding
The bonding of earth plasters to walls is very important.  When plastering a stone or earth wall the composition of the mix as well as its application are both crucial in producing a good bond (the join between the two materials).  The plaster and the wall itself should ideally be compatible so that shear forces are transmitted between them and not terminated at the bond. Good bonding reduces the incidence of cracking caused by changes in ambient temperature and humidity.  The plaster must be applied in coats of recommended thickness to prevent excessive strain at the bond

MUDOBE GLOBAL

Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, and water, with some kind of fibrous or organic material (sticks, straw, dung), which is shaped into bricks using frames and dried in the sun. It is similar to cob and mudbrick. Adobe structures are extremely durable and account for some of the oldest extant buildings on the planet. In hot climates, compared to wooden buildings, adobe buildings offer significant advantages due to their greater thermal mass, but they are known to be particularly susceptible to seismic damage in an event such as an earthquake.^[1]

Buildings made of sun-dried earth are common in the Middle East, North Africa, South America, southwestern North America, and in Spain (usually in the Mudéjar style). Adobe had been in use by indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Southwestern United States, Mesoamerica, and the Andean region of South America for several thousand years, although often substantial amounts of stone are used in the walls of Pueblo buildings.^[2] (Also, the Pueblo people built their adobe structures with handfuls or basketfuls of adobe, until the Spanish introduced them to the making of bricks.) Adobe brickmaking was used in Spain already in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, from the eighth century B.C. on. ^[3] Its wide use can be attributed to its simplicity of design and make, and the cheapness thereby in creating it.^[4]

A distinction is sometimes made between the smaller adobes, which are about the size of ordinary baked bricks, and the larger adobines, some of which are as much as from one to two yards (2 m) long.

MUDOBE HOUSE

http://www.alalakh.org/mudbricks2008.asp

MUDobe

EARTH ARCHITECTURE
Dirt—as in clay, gravel, sand, silt, soil, loam, mud—is everywhere. The ground we walk on and grow crops in also just happens to be the most widely used building material on the planet. Civilizations throughout time have used it to create stable, warm, low-impact structures. The world’s first skyscrapers were built of mud brick. Paul Revere, Chairman Mao, and Ronald Reagan all lived in earth houses at various points in their lives, and several of the buildings housing Donald Judd’s priceless collection in Marfa, Texas, are made of mud brick. The Earth Architecture website focuses on architecture constructed of mud brick (adobe), rammed earth (pisé), cob, compressed earth block or other methods of earthen construction and serves as a database for the discussion and dissemination of events, resources, and images of earth architecture in the context of contemporary architecture culture.

Synopsis
Currently it is estimated that one half of the world’s population—approximately three billion people on six continents—lives or works in buildings constructed of earth. And while the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael, founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era, focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth, mud brick, compressed earth, cob, and several other interesting techniques. EARTH ARCHITECTURE presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.

An engaging narrative addresses the misconceptions associated with earth architecture. Many assume that it’s only used for housing in poor rural areas—but there are examples of airports, embassies, hospitals, museums, and factories that are made of earth. It’s also assumed that earth is a fragile, ephemeral material, while in reality some of the oldest extant buildings on the planet are made of earth. The book also touches on many topics that pervade both architecture and popular media today, such as the ecological benefits and the politics of building with earth, particularly in developing nations where earth buildings are often thought of as pre-modern or backward. With captivating discussion and more than 300 images, Earth Architecture showcases the beauty and simplicity of one of humankind’s most evolved and sophisticated building technologies.
Synopsis
Currently it is estimated that one half of the world’s population—approximately three billion people on six continents—lives or works in buildings constructed of earth. And while the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael, founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era, focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth, mud brick, compressed earth, cob, and several other interesting techniques. EARTH ARCHITECTURE presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.

An engaging narrative addresses the misconceptions associated with earth architecture. Many assume that it’s only used for housing in poor rural areas—but there are examples of airports, embassies, hospitals, museums, and factories that are made of earth. It’s also assumed that earth is a fragile, ephemeral material, while in reality some of the oldest extant buildings on the planet are made of earth. The book also touches on many topics that pervade both architecture and popular media today, such as the ecological benefits and the politics of building with earth, particularly in developing nations where earth buildings are often thought of as pre-modern or backward. With captivating discussion and more than 300 images, Earth Architecture showcases the beauty and simplicity of one of humankind’s most evolved and sophisticated building technologies.

Synopsis
Currently it is estimated that one half of the world’s population—approximately three billion people on six continents—lives or works in buildings constructed of earth. And while the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael, founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era, focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth, mud brick, compressed earth, cob, and several other interesting techniques. EARTH ARCHITECTURE presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.

An engaging narrative addresses the misconceptions associated with earth architecture. Many assume that it’s only used for housing in poor rural areas—but there are examples of airports, embassies, hospitals, museums, and factories that are made of earth. It’s also assumed that earth is a fragile, ephemeral material, while in reality some of the oldest extant buildings on the planet are made of earth. The book also touches on many topics that pervade both architecture and popular media today, such as the ecological benefits and the politics of building with earth, particularly in developing nations where earth buildings are often thought of as pre-modern or backward. With captivating discussion and more than 300 images, Earth Architecture showcases the beauty and simplicity of one of humankind’s most evolved and sophisticated building technologies.

MUDOBE

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MUDOBE A MUDHOUE many of the noble buildings in Africa are made of the most humble material -MUD. This adobe shows the