Dirt Domes Designed for Emergency Housing

Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today

April 3, 2002

In regions of the world devastated by floods, earthquakes, fire,
hurricanes, and war, where money and natural resources are lacking, one
thing always remains—dirt. That is the material of choice for
architect Nader Khalili, who uses dirt to build dome-shaped emergency
housing.

Khalili believes his dirt domes, which are cheap,
eco-friendly, and quick to construct, could provide housing for the more
than a billion people worldwide who lack adequate shelter.

The domes, which can be built in as little as a day, look like adobe beehives or sand-colored igloos. The domes would be ideal for rapidly rebuilding Afghanistan, especially after the recent earthquake, said Khalili who founded the non-profit California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), in Hesperia, California, to develop low-cost, environmentally oriented building styles.

Khalili's work has attracted the attention of the United Nations, NASA and, most recently, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. With Khalili's guidance, Wade is considering building an eco-city with 20,000 dome homes for people left homeless after severe flooding earlier this year.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is always looking for new ways of building cheap housing in disaster-struck regions. Lorenzo Jimenez de Luis, of UNDP's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, visited Cal-Earth to examine the dome's potential.

"What we saw was very impressive. These domes were very easy to build, they were made of compressed earth and could be adapted to the soil type of any country for less than $80 per unit," said Jimenez de Luis.

The only issue is the element of respecting people's way of building, Jimenez de Luis explained. Domes are traditional architecture in Afghanistan and Iran, but beneficiaries in other countries may not be so eager to accept these styles.

Materials of War

The style of architecture, called "Superadobe," uses sandbags—filled with dirt, sand, or clay—and barbed wire to construct the dome.

The sandbags are stacked in coils that are held in place with the barbed wire. As the dome rises, the rings of sandbags gradually get smaller, allowing the walls to curve inward and form a self-supporting roof.

"This construction method allows us to use elements of war—sandbags and barbed wire—and transform them into elements of peace," said Khalili. The domes can be finished with lime and cement to give a more permanent stucco-like appearance.

"Mr. Khalili's architecture is revolutionary even though it uses ancient technology," said Jimenez, "I would love to see his ideas tested and tried."

The UN planned to test the structures in Gujarat, India, after the earthquake. However, the royalties demanded by the State of California, where Khalili's technology is registered, were prohibitively high and the Indian government lost interest, said Jimenez de Luis.

Khalili insists that any problems with royalties or other bureaucratic hassles could be avoided by setting up a satellite dish and transmitting essentially do-it-yourself dome-building seminars to India, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

Another plan to build these structures on the Iranian-Afghan border was aborted after the border was closed to refugees. But it is not too late to build these dwellings in Pakistan, where there are sprawling refugee camps, said Khalili.

The inspiration for Khalili's creations came from his travels through Iran. In the mid-1970s Khalili closed his architectural firm in Los Angeles and Tehran, which specialized in corporate high-rises, and rode his motorcycle around the Persian countryside for five years.

Observing the use of natural materials to construct homes and moved by the poems of the 13th century Persian mystic poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, who exalted the elements—earth, fire, water and air—he sought to develop more organic housing that was in tune with the environment.

Safety Standards

Although the emergency shelter domes have been approved for use at disaster sites, Khalili thinks the style could meet modern needs in industrialized countries. The Superadobe technology took about six years to pass building code requirements because special tests had to be developed to test the architecture.

Hesperia, which is about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, requires particularly rigorous building codes, as it lies in California's seismic zone four—the most severe earthquake zone.

Although there are many examples of domed structures in architecture, one of the most obvious being the U.S. Capitol, dirt domes have never been addressed in building codes, said John Regner, senior plans examiner for the City of Hesperia's Building and Safety Division.

The first tests applied stress asymmetrically to the dome, and then a couple of years later a system using steel cables was used to apply thousands of pounds of pressure to the structure. "The testing equipment failed and the buildings didn't," said Regner.

"I don't see these domes becoming widespread, and I don't know whether I want to live in one, but there is no question that this is now an approved building technology," said Regner.

In Hesperia, at least, Khalili's team is now in a position to build houses and museums using Superadobe.

One of the great advantages of the technology is that it's two-foot walls insulate the structure, keeping it warm in winter and cool in summer. The domes can also be finished to suit more upscale tastes. Currently a three-bedroom Superadobe home is under construction at Cal-Earth.

This week, the Associated Press reported that migrant farm workers in Northern San Diego County are experimenting with the domes as an alternative to illegal plywood, plastic, and tin shanties that violate all health and safety codes.

This story airs April 3, 2002, on National Geographic Today.

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