Book Review
Dreams in Mud
CRATerre; P.Doat, A.Hays, H.Houben, S.Mathuk & F. Vitoux Hard Back (English Edition); Rs.500; pp.284; 1991
Rajiv Gupta
Do you know what material should be used to house the entire global population?  Yes, it is certainly Mud.  The fact of the matter is that half the people habitating this planet of ours live in mud houses.  Mud or earth is not merely the only building-material left for housing the teeming millions of homeless, but is probably the only time-tested renewable which could check the high resource-depletion and ecological degradation caused by the modern building industry.  This high-tech in industry is an energy-guzzler and really costs the earth.  Mud, on the other hand, is an environment-friendly material which is universally available and mud houses could be easily built with locally available skill by anybody and anywhere in the world.

If we are ecologically-sensitive and care about that section of society which is too vulnerable to even spell out its shelter needs, we must roll up our sleeves and build mud houses for the homeless millions who have been marginalized with the advent of urbanization.

Turning back the pages of history, the colossal Egyptian pyramids and mastabas at Saqqarah, the Ctesiphon arch in Iraq and the Chan Chan ruins of Peru are standing testimonies to the technological feasibility of mud-architecture of monumental proportions.

It would be wrong to infer that mud is a thing of the past since it continues to predominate in the Third World countries of Africa, middle East and Latin America.  Abodes of adobe or mud-bricks have gained immense popularity in South-West America, due to its roots in Indian and Spanish tradition of mud-housing.  In China, for example, the word used for compacting mud (for rammed-mud construction) also means-’to build’.

The tragedy, however, remains that Asia has virtually lost its heritage of mud habitats.  To revive this age-old tradition and rediscover the qualities of this vernacular architecture, CRATerre - the International Centre for Earth Construction in France - carried out an in-depth research in mud-housing and came up with a book in French, termed-’Construire en Terri’.

A New Delhi based environmental NGO - the Mud Village Society - has brought out the first English edition of this book, called ‘Building with Earth’, and made this versatile document accessible to the readers of South Asia.  This vibrant publication of about 300 pages and 284 illustrations is not simply a reader-friendly book, but also a hard-core user’s manual, unfolding the nuances of building actual mud-houses.

Building with Earth certainly broadens the horizons of the reader by exploding the myths pertaining to mud-housing, providing technical details and practical guidance to all those who want to help themselves.  In a nutshell, this intriguing book is not just a poetry in mud but rather a prose in technical rehabilitation.  It is not based on empirical derivations but sound, well-researched and thoroughly-tested formulae for building natural, cost-effective houses for all sections of the society.  This lucidly-written, versatile, publication is a must for all those technical and non-technical readers who ardently believe in an alternative development paradigm-wherein people matter.

Both the paper-back and hard-cover editions of Building with Earth are available with Development Alternatives, B-32, Tara Crescent, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi - 110 016, at the following discounted rates for India and South Asia :

Cost of ‘Building with Earth’

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