A wall made of rammed earth, found on the Chapel of Reconciliation in Berlin.
I hope my friends Magda and Verena like this one, their uncle built most of this great rammed earth building. He is an artist working a lot with loam, clay and earth, and he is a leading expert in building with loam. The link to his website is right at the bottom of this sketchbook entry.
So. Right after the Climate Change Conference in Durban has finished, some numbers. How much of that climate change is related to buildings, and could therefore be avoided by better architecture?
According to unep.org the building sector is responsible for 30-40% of world-wide energy consumption. Allthough these numbers should be a bit better in Europe, sure there is a lot to be done, especially in the building process as this affects it’s CO2 bilance as well. The Rocky Mountain Institute, a “non profit think-and-do tank” working on sustainable buildings, gets to a similar number of 42% for the United States:
My first impressions of the earthships was “wow, he did what i was thinking to do, and he did it 30 years ago!” Time to dive into that a bit deeper. Allthough i like the archaic look of those buildings. Maybe i can draw some sketches on how a more simple, less esoteric looking earthship could look like…
