One of the World’s Most Avid Earth Builders David Easton Dies

The death of David Easton, 72, of Napa, Calif., will not silence his dreams nor his legacy. Beginning his career almost 50 years ago, Easton revived rammed earth -- that mixture of sand, loam, clay, and moisture rammed hard within forms to create massive solid earth walls. Since the ‘70s, he advocated for and experimented with earth as a building material. According to Mr. Easton’s long-time associate Alan Wright, Founder, and President of SosteNica, a non-profit 501c3 organization working in Nicaragua:

Earth is one of the most ancient forms of durable construction. 14,000 years ago, Jericho, among the world’s first cities, grew from earth construction. The ancient city-states of Mesopotamia still have surviving rammed earth building remains dating back 8,000 years. A similar technique was used to build the Great Wall of China.

In a 2018 interview with The Architects' Take, Mr. Easton described how he learned about Rammed Earth and why he chose to try it.

I found a book on the rack of a natural food store in Jackson, CA that was ‘How to Build Your House of Earth’ by an Australian named Rex Middleton. I was looking for a way to build my own house with a minimum investment in the cost of building materials. I evaluated rammed earth and thought that although there wasn’t much written about it, it seemed to be the most efficient way.*

In his book The Rammed Earth House (2012), Mr. Easton explained why he championed it:

What I read, that moist soil compacted directly into movable forms yielded immediately load-supporting walls, seemed too good to be true. As an industrial engineer, I was always working toward increasing efficiencies, and with no sticky mud, no waiting for the bricks to dry, no mortar to mix, and no bricks to lay, rammed earth seemed like a big improvement over adobe. I calculated rammed earth would use one-fifth of the water, one-quarter of the mixing time, and less than 2 percent of the drying time.

In the book’s introduction, Mr. Easton wrote why builders usually prefer other methods over rammed earth:

As labor costs rise, labor-saving systems dominate the building industry. The trend is for lighter-weight elements that are quick to assemble and as close to finished in the factory as possible. The goal is to reduce the on-site labor costs and decrease the total number of days spent from groundbreaking to owner occupancy. The problem with this method of building is that with the primary emphasis placed on speed of construction, decisions of what materials to use and where to buy them tend to be driven by the bottom line rather than by the more important criteria of sustainability and environmental responsibility.

Mr. Easton spent years educating people about rammed earth’s importance, including Wright.

Wright said:

In 1992, David and his crew travelled to Leon, Nicaragua where they built a massive, rammed earth school building. In 2010, he spent two weeks in Mexico teaching a course in rammed earth construction while building a rammed earth school. Rammed earth uses less concrete and steel. It is recyclable. It requires less embedded energy. It is a passive solar material, and more importantly, it is a real material, not synthetic. It is fireproof which is useful if you live in California. It is also an appropriate technology for countries with ample labor, correct soils, warm days and cool nights, even if they do not have lots of money.

To learn more about rammed earth, read Easton’s book: The Rammed Earth House.

*https://thearchitectstake.com/...