Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

This is an extraordinary work. Ceramic houses is full of experiential advice, technical guidance, and encouragement. -- Fine Homebuilding

To this visionary architect the earth houses are the obvious response to the 21st century housing shortages, deforestation, the energy crunch.. -- Orange County Register

We think this design has the potential of revolutionizing the housing industry. -- Hesperia Mayor

Product Description

How-to-build step by step an adobe and ceramic architecture that is affordable and self-help. How to build arches, vaults, domes, and utilize the natural energy of wind, sun-and-shade to help save forests and create a sustainable architecture. How to fire and glaze an entire building after it is constructed from clay-earth on site. A NEW UPDATE CHAPTER introducing the Superadobe technology, building with almost any on-site soil using sandbags and barbed wire.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 233 pages
• Publisher: Cal Earth Press Press (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1889625019
• ISBN-13: 978-1889625010
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #248,793 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary Alternative From Building a House with 2X4's, January 24, 2000

By	David Vossler (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

Are you searching for an environmentally safe alternative to building a house with hundreds of 2x4's? If so you will love this book. It is a fast read discussing one man's quest for designing houses that are safe and easy to build for everyone in the world. There are several examples of houses and schools built with this method. At the end there is a section on how to build a model house out of clay using this method. It is a fun project to do with kids. This book has been updated to discuss the SuperAdobe building method. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in alternative building methods.

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Work in Progress, March 30, 2004

By	Jim Curry (MT) - See all my reviews

The author is obviously a person of great vision and enormous generosity of spirit. The book is very good, and I hope that a rating of three stars isn't some insult where no insult is deserved. I was very disappointed because I expected a serious discussion of superadobe techniques, which I regard as possibly more practical than the ceramic constructions. The book has only seven pages treating superadobe. Those are pasted as an afterthought, right at the end. They don't constitute a detailed and serious discussion. As much information can be found on the calearth.org web site. So, I felt that the advertisements of the book were a little misleading.

The book itself is an education on classical earth construction and the improvement produced by firing it. As a person unfamiliar with architecture and construction, I had hoped to find something like a cookbook. Just tell me how to build a nice house easily, and I'd be happy to do it. Part of the education is to realize that things aren't quite so simple. Many issues arise, and, at the time of its writing, not all of them are well understood or totally settled. In particular, the details of firing a house into its ceramic status is not only explained in a partial way, but clearly more work is required to get a full understanding. The author could successfully fire houses himself, but the process was not reduced, at this writing, to entirely simple formulas for the use of lay persons. In that sense, each person working from the book would need to take on some considerable personal responsibility. It might not all work correctly. Consequently, I don't consider this book to be an especially good guide for a novice or amateur builder. That doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. However, I wouldn't read it, put up my own dome adobe house, and then sit down for tea underneath my own dome. The thing would probably fall in.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rebuilding safely in Iran and elsewhere, after earthquakes, December 30, 2003

By	Barbara D. Michael (Scarborough, ME United States) - See all my reviews

If ever a book was inspired by compassion for earthquake victims, this is it. Aware of the bitter experience of Middle East peoples with seismic disasters, architect Nader Khalili pulls together what works in those same cultures to show how we can build affordable housing that will survive major earthquakes.

Key principles: Use the earth (clay) underfoot as your building material. Spare the forests and watersheds.

Use simple human-scale building elements, like bricks or sandbags that ordinary people can stack by hand.

Use the arch, dome, and vault. These architectural forms work where post and beam timbers are not available. They are seismically stable. They are not subject to the gravitational loads that make flat roofs cave in over time. They make climatically comfortable spaces with sun and shade surfaces that circulate hot and cool air appropriately.

Fire the clay structure to make it a strong unitary enclosure, like an inverted teacup. It will slide safely over seismically moving earth.

Ceramic Houses - and Khalili's work generally - offers a timely recipe for new development and rebuilding in seismically active areas like the Middle East, and, take note, California. It's no accident that Khalili's prototype structures have been built and approved by local authorities in Hesperia, CA.

Nader Khalili brings together the clay and earth underfoot, the architectural vocabulary of arch, dome, and vault, and simple building technques that ordinary people can use to build seismically safe, comfortable, inexpensive, and beautiful houses.