Contribution - Laura Ceriolo

In the course Construction and Materials I, Form and Matter, for first-year architecture students and second-year Polytechnic students (engineers architects), the soil is treated as a source of raw material for raw earth constructions, widespread not only in the South of the world, but also in Belgium and back in the limelight as sustainable and healthy buildings.

Mother earth is worked by hand, foot or with handicraft tools, often mixed with straw, to build huts and shelters, even schools in the South of the world, while in Belgium it is often compacted to form unbaked bricks or plugging for colombage type frames.

In Yemen, for example, there are entire cities built with earth, in spite of what Napoleon I despised, namely "a city of mud" la ville de la Roche-sur-Yon built by his architect François Cointeraux (1740-1830).