Characteristics of traditional building materials and techniques based on earth, stone and timber: An overview and focus on Morocco

Abstract

Traditional buildings are characterized by their simplicity, ideal integration with their immediate environment and cohabitation with the neighboring climate. Thus, they are considered as endogenous constructions. Moreover, traditional building ensures a comfortable living environment for the inhabitants while protecting the ecology. In the aim of providing a global vision of materials and traditional construction techniques most widely used in different regions of the world, particularly in Morocco, as well as the scientific improvements concerning their characteristics, especially mechanical ones. A comprehensive review and bibliographical analysis were carried out using a qualitative approach on raw earth, stones and wood as well as their different construction modes retained. Through this approach, we were able to look at their technical characteristics, the improvements that had been achieved and finally making the necessary recommendations to promote this model of sustainable construction. The general trend is clearly towards improving the mechanical, technical and economic performance of traditional buildings by applying modern techniques and incorporating artificial materials. This multi-scale mixing observed leads us to believe that there is another hybrid approach that emerges in the field of construction. This approach consists of cohabiting the advantages of each of the techniques: the modern one by its better mechanical performances and its economic efficiency and the traditional one by its power of insulation and its ecological and bioclimatic aspect. This approach must be generalized to touch all the aspects of the traditional buildings as the valorization of the technique of roofing by the arches, vaults and cupola with modern technology of the prefabrication and the acceleration of the setting lime by the technology of the carbon cure with the aim of providing us with traditional constructions: ecological, durable, resistant, competitive and good market.