Redefining the concept of home June 21, 2000 Arabia on Line DUBAI (AROL) - In the eco-friendly 21st century, one architect is attempting to redefine the concept of the traditional home and convince the world to go back to nature � and live in mud huts. Visionary architect Nader Khalili has decided that earthen homes are the way forward. Visually, they may take some getting used to, but his so-called �Super adobe� homes are strong, energy efficient, do not contribute to deforestation and best of all, are as cheap as muck. Khalili developed his �Ceramic� and �Super adobe� building techniques after studying desert villages in his home country of Iran. Combining ancient adobe and ceramic techniques with space-age applications, he worked from 1975 to 1980 on perfecting the art of mud-hut building. Khalili, 59, moved his project to southern California in 1991, when he founded the Cal-Earth Institute in Hesperia. Wind-swept and basking in temperatures as high as 110 degrees, the arid high desert of Hesperia was considered an ideal testing ground for Khalili and his students to experimentally construct homes out of earth. The Super adobe houses are constructed out of barbed wire (for strength and reinforcement and sandbags, which are filled with dirt and coiled like clay into a dome shape. Globules of earth are then added, for decorative effect, to the exterior. Khalili claims the homes are resistant to flood, earthquake, fire and hurricane. Better still, a sum of just $250 covers the cost of materials for building the simplest, economy structures. Spaces can be made for windows and doorways so the interiors are not dark and dreary, as one might expect, but light and air-filled. The interior can also be non-toxic, with milk or oil paint used for covering clay or stew plaster. These experimental homes soon attracted the attention of Hesperia�s Recreation and Parks Department, who invited Khalili to design and construct buildings for the Hesperia Museum and Nature Reserve. Work began on the 7,500ft site on �Earth Day�, April 19th 1996, and the complex was completed in 1998. The bul using mile-long sandbags. However, the grand entrance to the building was constructed using the �Ceramic� method, where fired clay bricks, cleverly perforated to admit light, but not rain, are laid using adobe mortar. All the constructions were made from sand found on site, with the exception being a concrete floor which building officials insisted upon. Khalili�s vision did not stop there, and his team is now working on the �Desert Moon Village�, a 20-acre site comprising community center, shops and amphitheater, which should be completed in 2001. Khalili hopes that people will catch on to the value of his Super adobe homes, which, he believes, could ease the current housing crisis. Two Benedictine monks are just a few of the people who have become convinced that Khalili is on to a good thing. After deciding to build a monastery using his coil dome method, they arrived at the Hesperia Museum and Nature Center to train in the art of mud hut building. This article was published in Paris Gallery magazine. Arabia on Line � 2000 all rights reserved ================================================== Nisswa and Development Organisation (NAD) Tel/Fax: + 39 06 68212631 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://nadnet.org "Together for a sustainable development, gender equality, and a just globalisation" ==================================================
