Earth USA 2022, Returning to Santa Fe, NM, September 23rd - 25th, 2022
An important international conference on earthen architecture and construction returns to Santa, Fe, New Mexico, after a three-year hiatus. Registration is now open!
Earth building enthusiasts from all over the world will converge in Santa Fe, NM to participate in Earth USA 2022, the 11th international conference on earthen architecture and construction. The conference will be held at Scottish Rite Center's Alhambra Theater in Santa Fe, NM Friday, September 23rd to Sunday, September 25th, 2022.
After such synergy at TERRA 2022, Cornerstones looks forward to participating throughout EARTH USA. We're equally excited for the collaboration and building up of the earthen building community through this conference.
The three-day conference explores any material or method that uses clay as a binder — adobe, compressed earth block, monolithic adobe (cob), and rammed earth, among others. Presentations and poster sessions at Earth USA 2022 will allow academics and practitioners to discuss a broad field of disciplines, including architecture and engineering, historic preservation, public policy, environmental sustainability, cultural anthropology, sociology, and the arts.
In addition, Mark Chalom, a renowned architect who specializes in the field of sustainable architecture and who played an instrumental role in the significant 1970s Sundwellings Project at Ghost Ranch, in Abiquiu, NM, will be offering the keynote address. The conference will also award the second Fred Webster Earth Building Engineering Prize. In 2019, the inaugural prize was awarded to Jun Mu, Tiegang Zhou, and Wei Jiang of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture in China.
For more on the conference, visit: https://www.earthusa.org/. Above photo from the Earth USA website, taken at their 2019 conference.
Jake Barrow Joins International Committee on Earthen Building
Jake Barrow, acting Executive Director, was given the distinguished honor of being invited to join the International Scientific Committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage (ISCEAH). He accepted on the condition that he could represent “hands-on” practitioners of earthen heritage in developing the committee charter.
ISCEAH is a subsidiary of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, ICOMOS. While ICOMOS works to protect cultural heritage places, such as World Heritage sites, ISCEAH focuses on conserving earthen building materials, archaeology, and architecture. ISCEAH also is integral in organizing the TERRA conferences, the latest of which was in Santa Fe this late spring, in which Cornerstones participated significantly.
In 2025, the next international conference will be in Quito, Ecuador; it is currently in the planning stages. Joining the committee offers Cornerstones a window into the perspectives of many international experts and case studies of potential interest to our efforts here in New Mexico.