Great Wall of China

• Much of the media coverage has focused on the region’s traditional architecture.
• In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, it is common for local building cultures to be blamed for their own destruction.
• Vulnerabilities arise when patterns of knowledge transfer – and the traditional systems of repair and maintenance – are disrupted.
• Further, when new materials, such as concrete and cement, are introduced, they can be incompatible and so can reduce the buildings’ seismic resilience.

The resilience of earth buildings

• Ethnographic research into earth being used as an element of Aboriginal architecture in Australia suggests its use probably goes back much further.
• Rammed earth or “pise” was used in both Yemen’s 11th-century tower houses in Sanaa and Shibam and 17th-century farm buildings in Switzerland.
• In Morocco, both single story and multi-storey houses are constructed from mudbrick, rammed earth (where walls are built up with layers of compressed earth between wooden shutters), stone and timber.
• The thermal properties of earth ensure these traditional buildings stay cool in the height of the summer.

A history of mis-characterisation

• There is a long history of earthen buildings, and traditional construction methods, being labelled as “primitive”.
• The British proponents of the Tropical Modernism architectural movement, among others, claimed to have “invented” architecture in West Africa.
• This resulted in a shift away from vernacular architecture to colonial architecture and its “new” materials.
• Earth buildings, today, are still often classified “unsafe” with limited building codes or standards to enable the use of the material.