Walking through the current exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London is like walking back to the future – a more natural, more sustainable future...
Walking through the current exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London is like walking back to the future – a more natural, more sustainable future. Part of the ongoing Art of Mud Building season, the exhibition focuses on the Malian town of Djenné, famous for its Sudano-Sahelian style mud towers. These include the stunning Great Mosque, pictured above, plus individual family homes decorated with earthen spires. These ingenious structures are made from the mud of the River Niger, which is mixed with chopped straw and dried into bricks on the riverbank. Once in place, they are plastered with another all-natural mixture of mud and rice husks: all local, carbon-negative and biodegradable.
It’s ancient technique, and stunningly sci-fi examples can be found across the Sahara – from the Sankore University in Timbuktu to the Agadez Grand Mosque in neighbouring Niger. Further north, in Tunisia, the circular dug-out homes of the Berber, made famous in Star Wars, provide cool and shelter from the desert heat, but what’s most amazing about the West African buildings is their height and size. Supported by wooden beams that also act as built-in scaffolding for repairs, they stretch towards the empty blue sky, showing how traditional and eco-friendly needn’t mean unambitious.
Stepping back out onto the glass and metal filled streets of the modern city, it’s striking how little we’ve managed to combine modern architecture with these older, more earth-based methods. If that started happening on large scale, things could get very interesting indeed.
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