Adobe

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Adobe walls

Description

1) A handmade, sun-dried brick typically made from wet mud and straw. Adobe may also contain Sand, Clay, dung, Grass, chaff, and/or Blood. It is porous, wettable and susceptible to wet-dry cycle degradation. Adobe was used as early as 7000 BCE for houses, buildings and pyramids. It is commonly found as a construction material in arid climates, such as Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, India, China and in pre-Columbian Americas. Adobe walls are typically built using mud mortar between the brick layers followed with a mud Stucco finish layer. Adobe provides good heat insulation.

2) A silt or soil containing a high proportion of clay.

Deteriorated adobe walls

Synonyms and Related Terms

mudbrick; unfired brick; unburnt brick, sun-dried brick; sun-baked brick; Adobe (Deut.); adobe (Esp., Fr., Port.);

Adobe bricks

Resources and Citations

  • N.Agnew, J.Druzik, T.Caperton, M.Taylor, "Adobe: The Earliest Composite Material" ICOM Preprints, Sydney 1987, p.439-446.
  • J.Clifton, "Adobe Building Materials: Properties, Problems & Preservation" Technology & Conservation, 1/77, p.30-34.
  • G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 118
  • Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996
  • Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Practical Pottery, Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1992
  • The Dictionary of Art, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., New York, 1996 Comment: "Bricks"
  • Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
  • The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998