Projects

Rammed Earth: a Code of Practice

‘Rammed Earth: a Code of Practice’ is a comprehensive guide to building with rammed earth. Re launched in 2011 it now has more pictures of buildings both in Africa and the UK. With earth building and earth homes now more popular than ever this is the perfect building course in a book.
Back in 1988 we applied for funding to research a new code of practice. We applied to DfID because they couldn’t use the technology on their development projects without data to back them up. We were granted funds in 1990 and put together a team including John Norton of Development Workshop, Robin Spence of Cambridge Architectural Research and David Lilley of Newcastle Universities Civil Engineering Department.

The Code focused on Africa, with maps and issues such as termites and seismicity dealt with. The Code is quite traditional in having chapters broken into Guide (discussion), Standard (deemed to satisfy) and Tests, with the view that any national Standards authority could adopt the Code in whole or in part.

It was published in 1996 by Practical Action Publishing