The word 'adobe' is used for a type of baked mud brick that blends the elements of soil, water, and sunlight.
It's an ancient building material manufactured from tightly compacted sand, clay, and straw or grass mixed with moisture, then shaped into bricks and dried without the use of an oven or kiln, baked naturally in the sunlight. It's a favorite choice for southwest-style homes and mountain houses.
Thanks to its long history, adobe has grown from an old construction material into a highlight of desert and Arizona design. Adobe is a low-impact and sustainable building material that is resilient, biodegradable, and provides good thermal insulation, making it appropriate for hotter areas.
Apart from that, adobe has high energy efficiency. Its unique qualities allow it to heat up slowly in the summer, allowing it to retain the night's chill for longer. It also functions as a natural insulator, having whatever heat or cold inside the house.
Adobe houses are also naturally fire-resistant, have low sound transmission levels through the exterior adobe walls, and give off a solid, secure feeling.
When confronted with the question of when was the first Adobe house built, most historians have different views. But the majority consensus indicates that such houses have been observed in various locations dating as early as the eighth century BCE.
Read on to know more about the different styles of construction used in adobe houses across various regions. Afterwards, also check what is the meaning of adobe houses and where are adobe houses found?
History Of Adobe Houses
The word 'adobe' is the Spanish word for 'mud brick', and it is a building material created from earth and organic materials. Adobe was one of the first building materials and it is being used today all around the world. Before 5,100 BC, Adobe architecture was discovered.
The phrase refers to any type of earthen construction or various architectural styles such as Pueblo Revival or Territorial Revival in some English-speaking regions of Spanish ancestries, such as the Southwestern United States. The majority of adobe structures resemble cob and rammed earth structures in appearance.
Adobe bricks have been utilized throughout the world, especially near ancient Egypt's muddy river areas and ancient Middle Eastern architecture. Adobe mud bricks were employed long before the famous old stone temples of Greece and Rome, and they can be seen in prehistoric construction. Climate, local traditions, and historical eras influence construction methods and adobe composition.
Native Americans and Europeans employed adobe architecture in Spain and other Mediterranean countries. There are many examples of historic adobe architecture that can be seen in Southern California and the southwestern states of the United States.
The Palace of the Governors, constructed in the early 17th century, is an adobe structure in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 'Adobe' is a distinctive feature of Santa Fe architecture, and many historic structures, such as the De Vargas Street House, have been wonderfully conserved (aka Oldest House in the USA).
The original adobe residence, built around 1200 CE, lies atop the partial foundation of an old Indian Pueblo.
The Great Mosque of Djenné in Central Mali, constructed close to the Sahara Desert, is perhaps the most well-known adobe structure globally. The Great Mosque of Djenné was built in 1907 on top of the remains of earlier mosques and occupies 62,500 sq ft (5,806 sq m), making it relatively fresh compared to comparable adobe monuments.
Many of its arches are 45 ft (13.6 m) tall, and some of its walls are 2 ft (0.6 m) thick.
Interesting Facts About Adobe Houses
Today, adobe is still frequently used. It is among the most eco-friendly and organic materials available, and it is popular in terms of both efficiency and style.
Italy and Spain have adobe structures that look like 3D printing. The space industry is investigating the prospect of using it as a construction material on Mars due to the abundance of clay on the planet's surface.
Based on where you are in the structure, the adobe walls are two and a half to three feet thick. Adobe walls are slightly pyramid-shaped, with a bit more width at the bottom than at the top.
When built appropriately, modern adobe homes in the American southwest state of Arizona are incredibly energy efficient, taking full advantage of the Sun in either active or passive Solar Systems.
They also fit in with the natural beauty of the desert landscape, allowing residents to appreciate the sight fully.
Puddled adobe constructions are exceptionally enduring in dry areas, and some of the world's oldest buildings are made of them. Because of their increased thermal mass, adobe buildings have substantial advantages, but they are also particularly vulnerable to seismic damage if not reinforced.
The 1976 Guatemala earthquake, the 2003 Bam earthquake, and the 2010 Chile earthquake are all examples of earthquakes that severely devastated adobe structures.
Earthquake Performance
Adobe construction has various advantages, like good thermal and acoustic properties and its low cost and simple building process. However, most traditional adobe architecture suffers severe structural damage or collapses during earthquake ground shaking, resulting in significant loss of life and property.
Because of its thick walls, low strength, and brittle tendency, adobe buildings are not safe in seismic areas. These constructions create significant seismic forces during powerful earthquakes due to their massive weight, which they are unable to resist and break quickly.
The most critical element in improving the seismic performance of adobe buildings is providing wall reinforcement. Adobe walls will crack at the corners and break up in huge blocks due to earthquake movement. The purpose of the reinforcement is to keep these massive adobe wall sections together.
One of the essential aspects of earthquake resistance for loadbearing masonry construction is a ring beam (also known as a crown, collar, bond, tie-beam, or seismic band) that connects the walls in a box-like building. The ring beam that receives and supports the roof must be sturdy, continuous, and well-tied to the walls.
Concrete or wood can be used for the ring beam.
Any robust and malleable material can be utilized as support, like bamboo, cane, reeds, vines, rope, timber, chicken wire, barbed wire, or steel bars. Vertical reinforcement prevents out-of-plane flexing and in-plane shear by tying the wall to the foundation and the ring beam.
Horizontal reinforcing assists in the transmission of transverse wall out-of-plane pressures to supporting shear walls, the restraint of shear loads between adjacent walls, and the prevention of vertical crack propagation.
To establish a robust matrix that will sustain the integrity of the walls after they have shattered into huge pieces, the horizontal and vertical reinforcement should be coupled together and the other structural elements.
Many new recommendations for constructing the latest adobe houses have been incorporated into the Adobe Construction Regulations of the province of San Juan, Argentina, which included the use of the ring beam and the Peruvian Adobe Code, which included a ring beam well as vertical and horizontal reinforcement. Huaca del Sol is the tallest adobe structure in Peru.
Historic adobe structures, regardless of their architectural or cultural significance, are vulnerable to damage during significant earthquakes. As a result, it is critical to offer necessary upgrades to historic structures to maintain life safety while preserving their originality.
When properly maintained, kept dry, expertly built, having a sturdy and watertight foundation, and are located in arid areas of the world, adobe houses can live for thousands of years. The oldest house dates back over 350 years. The Bam Citadel in Iran is over 2,500 years old.
Why did the Hopi and Pueblo use adobe to build their homes?
Long grasses for thatching and buffalo hides to cover their dwellings were unavailable to Indians in far west Texas. They did have mud, rock, and straw, and they built their adobe houses in pueblos using these items.
The adobe house was built in a classic southwest cultural structure created by the Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi tribes that resided in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The adobe houses came in various sizes and were frequently terraced and multi-story, with access by a doorway or a ladder through the roof.
The adobe, or pueblo communities, were made up of multi-story dwellings built on high tablelands accessible by challenging routes. Kivas, underground chambers utilized for tribal ceremonies and rituals at the heart of their rich spiritual life, were a fixture of every town.
Ladders rising to the traditional flat adobe roofs were strewn about the adobe settlements, as were cone-shaped bake ovens (hornos).
Simple buildings with at least three sides open were also created to cover the hot sun. For recreation, many adobe settlements included ball fields and plazas where residents might congregate. In adobe settlements, there were also garbage piles and cemeteries. Water was accessed by massive, complicated irrigation canals that may be 15 mi (24 km) long.
Water is mixed with sand and clay. Usually, straw or grass (and sometimes manure) is added. As the adobe mud plaster dries, this helps it shrink into uniform brick forms. The mud mixture is poured into wooden molds and hand-leveled. They can be any size or shape you wish, but they should be simple to move by hand.
The bricks are removed from the molds and put out in the sun on a straw or grass-covered platform. The bricks are put on their edges for at least four weeks of air-drying once they have dried for a few days.
There is a wide range of options that are available when it comes to the finishing on adobe walls. Some of the most popular options are whitewash, mud plaster, or stucco.
One more option that is available to the owners is to finish the walls with non-traditional plasters if they desire to avail of longer-lasting protection against the natural elements. Bricks that have been prepared using stabilized adobe generally do not require this sort of protection.
When it comes to adobe bricks, different materials can be used for their construction such as gravel, sand, or clay. This factor is usually determined by the constitution of the soil of the area.
For the preparation of the bricks, water, straw, and grass are mixed with mud, and then it is allowed to dry out in the air for some time. But as these bricks do not undergo any sort of fire treatment, these bricks are not that hard.
They, therefore, tend to swell and shrink according to the weather.
As a result, there are chances that constant flooding might result in the bricks turning back into mud, or in colder regions, such bricks can crumble after dryings. As a result, the adobe bricks are primarily used in warm climates found across the regions in Latin America, the Middle East, and southwest America.
When it comes to an adobe roof, the traditional roofs are constructed with help of a mixture of water, soil, organic materials, and sand. All these materials are thoroughly mixed and then pressed into wooden forms.
This technique is used for the preparation of dried earth bricks which would otherwise be laid along with a support that has already been plastered to its place using more adobe.
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