Iranian architect wants unique method tested

An Iranian-born architect now working in California's seismic zone urged his fellow Iranians on Friday to try his "superadobe" building technique, using sandbags and barbed wire, in rebuilding the quake-flattened city of Bam.

Architect Nader Khalili, who developed the superadobe method at his Cal-Earth Institute (www.cal-earth.org) in Hesperia, California, told Reuters he knew Bam well.

"It is one of the most important historic examples of earth architecture in the world. Some of its buildings go back 2,500 years," he said.

Khalili said superadobe offered the best option for rebuilding the city because it combined the region's traditional use of earth as a construction material with techniques that greatly improved a structure's resistance to earthquakes.

"If they rebuild with adobe (mud brick), it will fall apart again," he said.

Modern steel and concrete buildings took too long to build and were too expensive, Khalili said. Building authorities in Hesperia, about 80km east of Los Angeles, have approved Khalili's superadobe homes as safe to build in California's earthquake zone after rigorous testing.

The method uses sandbags filled with small amounts of cement mixed with earth dug from the building site as the building blocks in a house. Strands of barbed wire are laid between the sandbags to make the bags stick to each other.

The walls gradually curve inward at the top to form a self-supporting, domed roof that needs no timber or steel for support.

The city of Hesperia has commissioned Khalili to build a museum with superadobe and UN officials involved with disaster relief have praised the building method.

"I thought it was amazing. It is a hidden treasure," Omar Bakhet, director of the Emergency Response Division at the UN Development Programme, told Reuters in an interview two years ago.