Contribution of national guidelines in industry growth of earth architecture and earth buildings as a vernacular architecture

Abstract

Earth buildings have always been ignored thus small number of studies have been carried out into the investigation of earth architecture and earth buildings in the world. Therefore, the overall aim of this study is to evaluate the requirements of earth architecture and earth buildings. In fact, the main objective of the current study is to expand application of national guidelines in construction of earth buildings all over the world. The current survey is an investigation into the role of national codes in development of earth architecture and earth buildings which is based on online questionnaires in six countries. Upon completion the 763 survey responses were compared, which approximated a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 5%. The online questionnaires were completed based on various aspects of the existing research, literature review and discussion with several senior architects and researchers at ICOMOS. The responses obtained from ICOMOS members of USA, UK, Australia, Iran, India and Malaysia. A comparison has been made between the responses of ICOMOS members of the six surveyed countries. The results of current study indicate a lack of national codes and guidelines in each of these six countries. The assessment of contribution of national guidelines, presented in this survey, could be applied for the development of Earth architecture and Earth buildings in the six surveyed countries.