Backfill: A Dirt-Cheap Method of Building Houses

Imagine building permanent houses anywhere in the world with whatever is on the site. Not the building materials common to the area, but the material actually on the site – namely the terra firma. The sand; the clay; the dirt. That has been the dream of Iranian- born California architect Nader Khalili and the mission of the Geltaftan Foundation, an organization Khalili founded to study and promote fired-earth structures. Bothered by the cost of housing, both to the planet and to poor Third World countries, Khalili has spent the past 12 years developing a method of making permanent structures anywhere from the most common substance on the Earth, which is of course the earth itself. The idea was sparked by a