UNESCO Auroville Earth Institute, 2015
Diploma– Earthen Arches Domes + Vaults
I lived for a month in Auroville, India to both experience its exemplar egalitarian society whilst studying earth building under Satprem Maïni, Director at the Auroville Earth Institute, India (UNESCO Chair, Earthen Architecture). Using the Institutes’ Auram Press 3000, my class made hundreds of CSEB’s and with them I personally built three arches and a two-square-metre cloister dome.
At this small scale the development of the necessary skills was straightforward, and the warm terracotta-coloured structures were familiar and aesthetically pleasingly.
Although an empowering and gratifying practical learning experience, nevertheless–as with all forms of masonry–hand building with CEBs is highly skilled-labour intensive. As such, with due consideration to advances in technology and materiality, I finally concluded all forms of hand-built earthen architecture were inherently inefficient.
Adaptive Settlements
Interdependent Thinking
Gondwana Link rewilding_Australia
Sadhana Forest rewilding_India + Kenya
White Gum Valley development_Australia
Self-building Technologies