We had totally forgotten about a building technique, called ‘Earth bagging’, which has been around for a few thousand years. Worldwide this technique has been used right from making military bunkers to water retention structures.
In this method of construction bags are filled with an appropriate earth mix, sealed and stacked like conventional masonry with barbed wire acting as Velcro mortar between layers and consolidated by tamping, making the structure quake resistant.
The most attractive part of constructing earth bag homes is that building materials are literally available right in your own backyard.
In Pune, India, Aman Setu school has built earth bagging classrooms using mud, bamboo, straw, husk and cowdung—even discarded cement sacks, barbed wire, plastic bottles, advertisement hoardings. This way it has managed to teach its children their most fundamental and unforgettable lesson in ecological conservation.
Watch the following two videos which demonstrate how earth bags were used to construct classesrooms at Aman Setu:
