Morocco earthquake: why traditional earthen architecture is not to blame for the destruction communities have endured
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Saturday, September 16, 2023
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Much of the media coverage has focused on the region’s traditional architecture.
Key Points:
- 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.