Earth Building Developments in New Zealand

About 1/3 of the world’s population live in highly sustainable forms of earth construction but it needs to be more earthquake resistant and more widely adopted in the developed world along with other low energy, low carbon natural construction such as straw bale.

In this presentation Hugh Morris covered:

• Examples of modern earth buildings
• Recent developments in NZ Standards (2020 editions), including adjustments to meet requirements for insulation and seismic resistance, inclusion of straw bale buildings, and the citation process
• The performance of NZ earth and straw bale buildings in the Canterbury and Kaikoura earthquakes
• An overview of research behind earth and straw bale performance
• Comments on the carbon and energy performance of modern earth buildings