30TH

The necessity of improving both the scientific foundation
for earthen architecture practice (in new construction and in
conservation) and the level of collaboration among researchers
prompted the initiation of a research survey in 1998. Under
the auspices of the Terra project—an institutional collaboration
of the GCI, ICCROM (International Centre for the Study
of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), and
CRATerre-EAG (International Centre for Earth Construction–
School of Architecture of Grenoble)—the survey polled scientists
and practitioners about research needs and initiatives in
the field. The results served as the basis of a six-week online
discussion among colleagues across the globe, which then led to
an intensive one-day colloquium at the Terra 2000 conference
in Torquay, United Kingdom. The meeting produced a set of
research priorities that were disseminated widely to encourage
individuals and institutions to undertake needed research and to
promote collaboration. The priorities helped to focus future efforts
of the GCI and to engage a broader community of researchers.
They likewise helped lay the groundwork for important
earthen architecture research around the world.
professional exchange
As part of its promotion of knowledge sharing within the professional
community, the GCI for the past thirty years has supported
international conferences and colloquia devoted to the preservation
of earthen architecture, working to foster an open, fruitful,
and significant trade of ideas in the conservation of earthen
architecture. After the GCI’s initial participation in the Fifth
International Meeting of Experts on the Conservation of Earthen
Architecture organized by ICCROM and CRATerre in Rome in
1987 (and building on its research at Fort Selden), the Institute,
New Mexico State Monuments, and the National Park Service
joined with ICCROM and CRATerre-EAG to organize the Sixth
International Conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico, known
as Adobe 90.
Adobe 90 helped develop what had been relatively small and
specialized meetings of experts into truly international conferences,
greatly expanding the number and geographic distribution
of participants and papers and producing substantive publications
that helped legitimize the work of the field. It ultimately set a new
standard for conferences within the earthen architecture community
and fostered institutions in other regions to take on sponsorship
of the conference, which now occurs approximately every
four years and receives hundreds of abstract proposals.
With the intention of organizing the first conference in
Africa, the GCI partnered with the Ministry of Culture of Mali
to carry out the tenth Terra conference. Four hundred fifty
participants from sixty-five countries attended the 2008 conference
in Bamako.
Members of the Getty Seismic Adobe Project team conducting testing at Stanford University’s John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center in the
early 1990s. Photo: Getty Conservation Institute.
CONSERVATION PERSPECTIVES, THE GCI NEWSLETTER 23