IAAC Lecture Series – Architecture Made of Earth
Lecturer: Elisabetta Carnevale
Date: Tuesday, March 2nd, 19:30 (CET)
Location: Online – Zoom
Lecture Abstract
The ground we walk on and grow crops in also just happens to be the most widely used building material on the planet.
A material widely used in vernacular construction in Catalonia and throughout the world, today earth is coming back, thanks to its properties and to innovative techniques that meet contemporary expectations. Earth is becoming increasingly popular in contemporary architecture: hundreds of projects of high aesthetic and technical quality are emerging across five continents.
Earth is a building material of the future: it needs almost zero energy to be used, it is readily and locally available, and 100% recyclable: once the life of the building is over, earth can be returned to the ecosystem, according to the principles of regenerative architecture.
This talk reveals how to build with earth and why, and leads us to discover examples of contemporary architecture made with earth in Barcelona and around the world.
About Elisabetta Carnevale
Elisabetta Carnevale is an architect and an earth design and construction consultant. She holds a postgraduate degree in Earthen Architecture from CRAterre – ENSA Grenoble. After working for UNESCO on earthen built heritage in Ecuador and researching earth potential uses for design at Amàco research centre (Lyon, France), since 2018 she is a Faculty member of the Postgraduate in 3D Printing Architecture at IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia).
She is currently combining academic and research work with the professional activity of Arquitectura De Terra, an Architecture and Earth design Consultancy practice founded in 2018 in Barcelona that explores contemporary possibilities for earth and other sustainable materials both in Catalonia and in the Middle East.
