"The “SuperAdobe” homes of CalEarth are receiving plenty of attention after wildfires devastated parts of Los Angeles. Why aren’t we building them everywhere?"
"In the months since wildfires tore through Los Angeles County in January, destroying more than 16,000 structures in 24 days, thousands of families have begun the process of rebuilding from scratch, while also fearing what might happen when the next fire comes.
Some of those families have ventured to nearby Hesperia, just outside of Los Angeles in the southern Mojave Desert, to view model homes of the future. These are hardly your usual houses: There are no wooden frames, no metal roofs, and no siding. Instead, a visit to the CalEarth Institute takes you through a series of earthen domes and vaults formed by tube-shaped earth bags stacked and bound with mesh wiring before plastered over in a technique the nonprofit CalEarth calls “SuperAdobe.”
The technique, designed by the late architect Nader Khalili, is receiving “lots of individual interest” in the months after the Eaton and Palisades fires in January, said his son, Dastan Khalili, who has run CalEarth alongside his sister since their father’s death in 2008. “It’s much more in people’s consciousness in Southern California than it ever was before.”
Earthen structures have a deep history in the United States, from Indigenous earth mounds along the Mississippi River to the adobe homes of New Mexico’s Taos Pueblo. In modern times, luxury rammed earth homes are sprouting up throughout the Southwest, where the thermal mass held by earth walls keeps homes cool during hot desert days and warm during frigid nights."
Nick Aspinwall reports for Atmos with photographs by Clara Balzary June 2, 2025.
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