Rediscovering rammed earth

The Guardian - The Rammed Earth House in Cranborne Chase is one of the few projects in the UK that has been made by unstabilised rammed earth – a building material that consists entirely of compacted earth and which has been used as far back as the Neolithic period.

Today, as architects seek to improve the sustainability of a sector that is responsible for more than a third of global carbon emissions, the concept of using rammed earth sourced from, or near, the grounds of a proposed building site is attracting attention.

The argument for a component that has been used for construction in places as meteorologically distinct as Spain and Japan is that traditional building techniques can be deployed to create a circular construction process and address contemporary problems.

“Climate change makes it even more important that rammed earth is framed as a mainstream material,” says Emaad Damda, a lead architect at Tuckey Design Studio, which worked on the Rammed Earth House