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Innovative Iranian Architect Found - in California
EFL - (unusual article from Rooters: ie. I could detect no anti-American spin) Iran-born architect Nader Khalili has a technique for building earthquake-proof houses, but he is struggling to sell it to governments even though he teaches it for free and it could save countless lives. Called "superadobe," it uses nothing more sophisticated than sandbags and barbed wire, and it has been approved as quake-safe by the hard-to-please building authorities on Californiaâs seismic fault line. Khalili hopes to put the technique into practice in places like his native country, where an earthquake last month killed more than 30,000 people. But as simple, secure and cheap as superadobe appears to be, Khalili has battled for more than a decade to get the technique widely implemented -- with little success. The problem, he says, lies in the reluctance of bureaucrats to accept an idea that is not based on conventional steel and concrete. "The only things they accept are imitations from the West," Khalili said in an interview. Superadobe takes an ancient technique -- building with earth -- and improves upon it. Soil dug from the construction site is mixed with a small amount of cement and water and rammed into tubular bags which are laid one on top of the other to form walls. Barbed wire is placed between the layers to hold the bags together and provide reinforcement. In the simplest form of superadobe, the bags are laid in a circle about 12 feet across. The diameter of the rows gradually decreases toward the top. The result is a self-supporting dome, a traditional building form in much of the Middle East and Mediterranean. Superadobe can be used to build a one-room structure, or by combining the domes, more complicated multi-room houses.
Iranian village names are quite onomatopoetic. I wonder if there is also a town called Kab in the vicinity. Posted by: Super Hose 2004-01-13 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=24288 |