Rammed Earth House in Nepal

Our first two story residential house in Kathmandu is in progress. The second floor is now coming up. First floor is rammed earth and the second floor is lightweight bamboo frame with natural insulation.

Earth Plaster

It is believed that one needs at least 1/2 inch of earth plaster  in order to reap its health benefit. There are economic, health and ecological benefits of earth plaster, but many urban people are also seeking earth for sake of aesthetics. Mountain soil, especially from base of the mountains are known to have perfect [...]

Kitchen Interior

Here is the interior of the kitchen.  Its 8 meters high, 10 meters wide and 15 meters long. Who says you can not make large structure out of bamboo? You can do anything that cement and concrete can and that too in an ecological, economical and a beautiful way.

Finished Kitchen

After long and arduous battle our kitchen is finished. The tiles looks awesome. They are made on site! They have no embodied energy what so ever- meaning they are not burnt.
During this construction, we have followed a very conventional philosophy i.e. a sound hat and a sound boot is all what you need for protection. [...]

Bamboo Kitchen

 

Adobe, Cob and Bamboo

The work in Janakpur had stalled for various political reasons, one being kidnapping of our overseer. Well! That all seem pretty normal these days. Anyways, the villagers put all their effort to resume the work. It just heartbreaking to see, how much love and effort people have put into this project. We not only see [...]

Brickmaker in Nepal

Please click on the above picture to see an adobe brickmaker in action. These people have been making bricks for generation. They can make upto 500 bricks a day. Its ironic they make so many sun dried bricks in a day yet its hard to buy the bricks , its because all these [...]

Adobe Interior

Reddobe

This is an example from a house in Panauti, the inner wall is adobe and the outer wall is kiln burnt bricks. Interesting thing about this areas is the use of red mud mortar. Red mud (Rato Mato), in the other parts of the country, is used as plaster but here it is used as [...]

Update

Here is the update on the pati (public space) in Thimi. Anyone interested on visiting the sitecan contact us. The walls and pillars are up. Next step is the roof. The technique is purely traditional, they have not used any nails. The mortar is mud. The wood is carved in the site itself. One [...]

Bricks the Nepali way

Our Nepali adobe walls can go upto 36 inches in thickness. Usually in the Kathmandu region the outer most part is built with burnt bricks, that is mostly for the protection against rain. The bricks are angular in shape (see the above picture) where the inner portion gets more mud mortar then the outer portion. [...]

Gobidobe

One and half years after its construction, we have just heard our Gobi Dome is functioning perfectly well!! Our family were perfectly warm and happy in it. With the financial help from the New Zealand Nature Institute, we reintroduced adobe in Mongolia. The introduction of the dome technique was our additional gift to the wonderful [...]

RSS Feed

    RSS

Search

Resources

Press

Galleries

Categories

Archives

Links