How Architects Are Using an Ancient Building Technique to Combat Climate Change |
Rammed earth buildings have been around for thousands of years. Now, they’re having a modern moment.
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Horizon House [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato]
under your feet, and it doesn’t come with all the carbon baggage that other [building] materials come with,” says studio founder Jonathan Tuckey.
As a building technique, rammed earth—which combines clay soil with aggregate such as gravel into tightly compressed layers—traces back thousands of years. It was widely used in ancient China, but appears globally throughout history, including in the U.S. After the industrial revolution, and the innovations of steel, concrete, glass, and mass-produced bricks, the traditional method fell out of favor. Now, however, an increasing number of architects are looking to the material as a sustainable, place-rooted way to build amid a climate crisis that calls for dramatically reduced carbon emissions.
“It has this carbon credit locked into it—that’s a major head start against any other material,” says Tuckey. Because rammed earth doesn’t require high-temperature firing processes like bricks or concrete, and can use material from the building site itself (without need for transportation), its associated carbon emissions tend to be much lower.
It can also harness material that might otherwise go to waste. At Rammed Earth House, the client wanted some run-down buildings on site to be demolished—but rather than this rubble being wasted, Tuckey Design Studio used it as the aggregate for the rammed earth, recycling the old buildings into the new.
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“It’s an entirely circular material,” says Tuckey of rammed earth. “If you ever wanted to demolish it, it would just go back into the ground. If you wanted to repair it, you can just pick up the clay from the ground and bash it in simply—it will be restored immediately.”
Architects also praise rammed earth’s high thermal mass—insulative properties that regulate a building’s indoor temperature. For U.S practice Lake Flato Architects, this was particularly helpful for a home in west Texas, Marfa Ranch.
In the desert environment, temperatures vary greatly; using rammed earth........