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Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture
How to Build Your Own
by Nader Khalili

      Khalili's classic, authoritative manual describes how to build arches, domes, and vaults with earth, as well as techniques to fire and glaze earth buildings to transform them into ceramic houses. This newly revised edition also provides insight into the latest response by building officials to Superadobe or earthbag technology (structures of sandbags and barbed wire), a patented system that is free for the owner-builder and licensed for commercial use.

      Nader Khalili's ideas on ceramic houses and earth architecture have been published by NASA and utilized by the United Nations, and have passed building and safety tests in California. This new edition is now in its fifth printing.

      Fine Homebuilding magazine said this of the book: "This is an extraordinary work. Though very much the personal expression of an impassioned visionary, Ceramic Houses is full of experiential advice, technical guidance, and encouragement to those who would join the author in his search for cheap, durable, attainable housing for much of the world."

      Nader Khalili, an Iranian-born California architect and author, is the designer and innovator of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as "ceramic houses" as well as the Superadobe building technologies. He received his education in Iran, Turkey, and the United States, and has been a licensed architect in California since1970. In 1975, he closed his successful practice in the United States and Iran designing high-rise buildings and journeyed by motorcycle for five years through the Iranian desert, where he worked closely with local villagers to develop his earth architecture prototypes. His impressions have been collected in his book Racing Alone. Mr. Khalili serves as a consultant to the United Nations and is a contributor to NASA on construction technologies for the moon and Mars. He is the founder and director of the Cal-Earth Institute, Geltaftan Foundation--dedicated to research and development in earth and space architecture technologies for the moon and Mars.