RR: Partially, it’s my own passion. I’ve been fascinated by this material since I was a child because I grew up around it. My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather—for probably a thousand years or more, continuously—we’ve lived in mud buildings. So I’m deeply tied to it.

But I think now, more than ever, we urgently have to consider earth because it has very low embodied carbon; it’s non-toxic, locally available, inexpensive, fire-resistant and insect-resistant; it has thermal mass; and it can ultimately return to the earth.

It also connects us to our humanity—to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. This is how people on every continent built: with earth, with our hands and feet, together with our communities. I host workshops where I still teach traditional building techniques. Everybody comes together. We eat, we talk, we sing, we make things with mud, we repair and restore buildings, and we talk about history and the future.

Those are all aspects of architecture that I think we’ve become disconnected from. The architect doesn’t build. The builder doesn’t necessarily involve the community. The builder may not know where the materials came from or what their history is. We might live in our own homes without knowing our neighbours. We can live surrounded by latex paint, gypsum board, screws and coatings without having any idea where any of those things came from.

Earth construction can begin to resolve some of those disconnections. With an earth house, we can talk about the connection to the material, our communities, our past, and our bodies.

I want to be romantic about it—or maybe I shouldn’t say romantic, because I actually think I’m quite pragmatic about it. That doesn’t mean I’m anti-contemporary materials or processes. Obviously I’m not—I use robots. I’m interested in how we can use these technologies while reconnecting communities, bodies, materials and architecture. Earth is one way to do that.

I went to a funeral two days ago and saw one of my old high-school teachers. I told him, “I remember when I was a little boy, and my father built your adobe house.” And he said, “I remember that completely. I remember when you buried my daughter in the pile of dirt to make the adobes.” He still has photographs of it. That house is still there. There are all these memories connected to that way of making, and I don’t think that happens very often anymore. Now the contractor puts up a fence: it’s dangerous, you can’t come in, there are liability issues. Those kinds of stories become impossible.