Adobe is a building material made from earth and organic materials. Adobe is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of earthen construction, or various architectural styles like Pueblo Revival or Territorial Revival. Most adobe buildings are similar in appearance to cob and rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world.
A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term brick denotes a unit primarily composed of clay, but is now also used informally to denote units made of other materials or other chemically cured construction blocks. Bricks can be joined using mortar, adhesives or by interlocking. Bricks are usually produced at brickworks in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region, and are produced in bulk quantities.
An earth shelter, also called an earth house, earth-bermed house, earth-sheltered house, earth-covered house, or underground house, is a structure with earth (soil) against the walls and/or on the roof, or that is entirely buried underground.
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge, rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of the vegetation stays dry and is densely packed—trapping air—thatching also functions as insulation. It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates. Thatch is still employed by builders in developing countries, usually with low-cost local vegetation. By contrast, in some developed countries it is the choice of some affluent people who desire a rustic look for their home, would like a more ecologically friendly roof, or who have purchased an originally thatched abode.
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "render" commonly refers to external applications. The term stucco refers to plasterwork that is worked in some way to produce relief decoration, rather than flat surfaces.
Aston Sandford is a small village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Haddenham and 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of Princes Risborough. It is in the civil parish of Kingsey within the Buckinghamshire Council unitary authority area.
Haddenham is a village and civil parish in west Buckinghamshire, England. It is about 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Aylesbury and 4 miles (6 km) north-east of Thame in neighbouring Oxfordshire. At the 2011 Census, the population of the civil parish was 4,502.
Ford is a hamlet in the parish of Dinton-with-Ford and Upton, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the south eastern corner of the parish.
Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about 13 miles (21 km) east of the city of Oxford and 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town and forms part of the county border with Buckinghamshire. The parish includes the hamlet of Moreton south of the town. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 11,561. Thame was founded in the Anglo-Saxon era and was in the kingdom of Wessex.
Cob, cobb, or clom is a natural building material made from subsoil, water, fibrous organic material, and sometimes lime. The contents of subsoil vary, and if it does not contain the right mixture, it can be modified with sand or clay. Cob is fireproof, termite proof, resistant to seismic activity, and uses low-cost materials, although it is very labour intensive. It can be used to create artistic and sculptural forms, and its use has been revived in recent years by the natural building and sustainability movements.
Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings and other structures, like bridges. Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The manufacturing of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the use of these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as carpentry, insulation, plumbing, and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.
Rammed earth is a technique for constructing foundations, floors, and walls using compacted natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building method.
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture. Stucco can be applied on construction materials such as metal, expanded metal lath, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe for decorative and structural purposes.
Earthbag construction is an inexpensive building method using mostly local soil to create structures which are both strong and can be quickly built.
Natural building or ecological building is a discipline within the more comprehensive scope of green building, sustainable architecture as well as sustainable and ecological design that promotes the construction of buildings using sustainable processes and locally available natural materials.
The architecture of the California missions was influenced by several factors, those being the limitations in the construction materials that were on hand, an overall lack of skilled labor, and a desire on the part of the founding priests to emulate notable structures in their Spanish homeland. While no two mission complexes are identical, they all employed the same basic building style.
Chiltern Open Air Museum (COAM) is an independent open-air museum of vernacular buildings and a tourist attraction located near Chalfont St Peter and Chalfont St. Giles in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England. Its collection consists mainly of historic buildings at risk of demolition that have been dismantled and reconstructed in the museum grounds in a process of structure relocation.
A compressed earth block (CEB), also known as a pressed earth block or a compressed soil block, is a building material made primarily from an appropriate mix of fairly dry inorganic subsoil, non-expansive clay, sand, and aggregate. Forming compressed earth blocks requires dampening, mechanically pressing at high pressure, and then drying the resulting material. If the blocks are stabilized with a chemical binder such as Portland cement they are called compressed stabilized earth block (CSEB) or stabilized earth block (SEB). Typically, around 3,000 psi (21 MPa) of pressure is applied in compression, and the original material volume is reduced by about half.
Light clay is a natural building material used to infill between a wooden frame in a timber framed building using a combination of clay and straw, woodchips or some other lighter material.
Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called "wattle" is "daubed" with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. Wattle and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction method in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub construction.
