Construction of unfired clay bricks in area of cosentino

With "earthen architecture or bio architectures" are intended those fabricated which walls have been built almost entirely by employing a mixture of soil, water, sand and straw, whose manufacturing processes and / or production exclude the cooking step of material in high temperature furnaces. The earth in the plastic state, appropriately molded and left to dry in the sun, before or after to be mass in work in accordance with the construction technique used, has allowed in the past to realize high buildings from one to three floors. The earth was used as a building material, since ancient times from a great number of civilizations such as those of Mesopotamia, the Roman civilization, the Hindus and the Chinese emperors, thanks to its peculiarities, for example: easiness to obtaining the raw materials, to be molded as desired, light to transport and pose, reusable indefinitely, as could be formed and defeat several times and finally economic. This paper examines the earthen architecture still existing in the area of Cosenza, specifically the investigation was focused on the towns of San Marco Argentano, Santa Caterina Albanian, Roggiano Gravina and Altomonte. Completely have been registered about 70 housing units, some still inhabited and in excellent condition, where the building type frequently detected was the farmhouse (rural house characterized by masonry units "mattunazzi", planimetry that develops in height until it reaches on a single level and it consists of one or more compartments with external annexes: furnace, chicken coop and stall). In order to characterize the constituent materials it was planned and carried out a sampling plan which has circumscribed an extensive territorial surface, interesting 7 units, selected locally in order to be as representative of the study area and to the corresponding adjacent soils. In addition to the analysis in XRD spectroscopy, which have allowed the recognition of the mineralogical inorganic component present in the samples, were carried out biological analyzes on samples from different farmhouses chosen as representative with the purpose of recognizing the organic component through observations under the stereomicroscope.