Utopia Community, superadobe structures
In 2012, in response to an escalating over-crowding in Australia’s remote aboriginal settlements, due in part to the procurement of economically unsustainable prefabricated structures (James Davidson, 2010), an exemplar ‘SuperAdobe’ domed structure was built for AU$3000 in Utopia, a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory.
Similar to building with earth bags, SuperAdobe involves filling soft synthetic tubes with earth and a small quantity of stabiliser such as lime or Portland cement. The tubes are tamped as they coil-upwards in circular layers, braced with barbed wire, decreasing in diameter to produce a domed enclosure. In collaboration with Charles Darwin University, the modest 3m diameter dome (shown left) took ten days to complete by 20 people working alongside, Peter Hickson, Director of Earth Building Solutions. (ABC, 2012).
In 2015, given my work in social impact design and community development through collectivism, I spoke with Peter Hickson about the Utopia project. Notably, he drew inspiration from the design innovation of Nader Khalili, Founder of the California Institute of Earth Architecture (CalEarth). The Aga Khan Award winning architect is most celebrated for the cluster of 14 SuperAdobe domed shelters his team built for refugees in Iran, displaced by the Gulf War (Khan, 1992). Simple and replicable, it was encouraging to envision how SuperAdobe buildings, produced through collective action, could develop into a community-determined housing typology.
Though, I also understood the challenges of scaling such collective-action programs. As the technology is comparatively time and labour intensive, it was clear maintaining community participation would be unlikely. In my view, this limited SuperAdobe’s application to small-scale schemes/ minimum design interventions.
Adaptive Settlements
Interdependent Thinking
Gondwana Link rewilding_Australia
Sadhana Forest rewilding_India + Kenya
White Gum Valley development_Australia
Self-building Technologies
Natural Building Conference_USA
Super-adobe_Australia