Nader Khalili
Khalili began his architecture career designing high-rise buildings with offices in Los Angeles and Tehran. Aged 39, the architect closed both offices and travelled around Iran researching appropriate technology solutions to house the poor. He spent five years studying the vernacular desert architecture and the work of Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi poet and philosopher whom Khalili saw as a major influence and whose work he translated into English. At this time Khalili developed the technique of Geltaftan (literally meaning 'clay' and 'firing' in Persian) where adobe brick buildings are fired from within to increase their durability. He used the technique to rehabilitate houses in a village close to Tehran as well as constructing a school in this method. But his technique did not gain widespread appeal, due in part to the pollution caused by the oil firing process and its relatively high cost. (www.spatialagency.net, n.d.)
Nader Khalili (1936-2008) was an Iranian architect who lived and worked in both Iran and USA, where he pioneered the technique known as Super Adobe or Earthbag Construction. Designed initially in response to a NASA call for establishing human settlements on the Moon and Mars, this simple yet highly effective construction method can be used to build shelters quickly and without the need for specialist building skills. (www.spatialagency.net, n.d.)
Superadobe housing like the units in Baninajar is made by taking woven polyester bags and filling them with sand, soil, or clay — whatever earth material might be at hand. These sandbags are then laid in coils to create load-bearing walls that rise as high as fifteen feet, then spiral inward to form a domed roof. Strands of barbed wire are threaded through the bags to secure the layers and stabilize the walls — a cheap and no-skills-required replacement for wet mortar. Windows and an entryway are formed by way of simple pointed arches, shaped from the bags.
It was, and is, an idea of considerable power. It costs next to nothing — dirt cheap, if you will — and requires only a few unskilled laborers; four people can assemble a Superadobe shelter in a day, and the know-how is easily passed on, even by those who have just learned it. Once the seed of knowledge is planted, a community can continue to build its own Superadobe structures long after the NGOs have pulled out. (Bidoun, n.d.)
Baha'i prayers written by my dad during his imprisonment.
Through the years of my childhood the police attacked our house multiple times, confiscated our belongings for investigation and arrested one of my parents everytime.
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References:
Bidoun (n.d.). The Adventures of Superadobe: Nader Khalili: Visionary Architect Founder, California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture. [online] Bidoun. Available at: https://www.bidoun.org/articles/the-adventures-of-super-adobe [Accessed 23 Nov. 2022].
CalEarth. (n.d.). CalEarth. [online] Available at: https://www.calearth.org/.
www.spatialagency.net. (n.d.). Spatial Agency: Nader Khalili. [online] Available at: https://www.spatialagency.net/database/nader.khalili.