The development of earth architecture in Auroville attempts to link the ancestral tradition of raw earth buildings and the modern technology of stabilised earth. The R&D conducted by the Auroville Earth Institute finds its source of inspiration in the traditional earthen architecture which is found worldwide. Tradition includes the accumulated wisdom and knowledge over the ages and it is our duty to distillate the essence of this genius and use it for today's development.
Since ages raw earth has been used all over the world as a building material to achieve amazingly long lasting buildings. There is hardly any continent or country which does not have numerous examples of earth construction (Fig. 1-6). From the roof of the world in Tibet, or the Andes Mountains in Peru, to the Nile's shore in Egypt or the fertile valleys of China, many are the examples of earth as a building material.
The oldest one can be seen in Egypt, near Luxor, built around 1300 BC: the vaults of the Ramasseum, in the “rest” of Thebes. India also shows very old earthen buildings: Shey palace in Ladakh, built in the 17th century and Tabo monastery in Spiti Valley – Himachal Pradesh, built with adobe blocks in 996 AD and which has withstood 1010 Himalayan winters. These “world heritage sites” show how earthen architecture has been used for achieving great and long lasting monuments. But vernacular architecture worldwide also shows how a local material has been used to create an endogenous architecture, totally adapted to the local context – social, economical, technical, climatic, etc.
Earth architecture and the skill of earth builders disappeared for a century: from the end of the 19th century till the latter half of the 20th century. The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy was the precursor for the renaissance of earthen architecture in the middle of the 20th century.