Terra Firma began to put the ancient wisdom of rammed earth to use in 1989 when CEO Paul Geraets began looking at methods used for thousands of years. These were predominantly Asian and European practices. The basic principle of rammed earth construction had gone much unchanged for centuries until French builder, Francois Cointeraux, discovered Pisé construction being used in the region of Lyon, circa 1800. He was drawn to its unique simplicity and eventually formed a school to teach it. Cointeraux saw rammed earth as “a means by which the common man could vastly improve the quality of his life” and this is precisely the sentiment that Terra Firma upholds today.

Terra Firma’s practice was also greatly informed by the much later Western trend to start building with rammed earth in the 1970’s. David Easton in California and Stephen Dobson in Western Australia started adapting their own practices, which blended modern engineering and the addition of 5 – 10% cement to rammed earth homes.
But this trend took time to take hold. In the 1930’s, South Dakota University began a rammed earth project that is still fully functional today. Yet despite its success, earth building writer Sim Van Der Ryn explains in ‘Alternative Construction’ that the career of the man who initiated it was doomed. Because of the unorthodox nature of the project at the time: ‘…anyone contemplating natural building materials would have been drummed out of the design and buildings profession.’
Fast forward and builders like Paul now work to industry building codes, specially tailored to earth construction over the course of the last 15 years.
New Zealand has developed internationally applauded codes for rammed earth but rammed earth homes still deserve more recognition.
“The building industry here still holds standard wall insulation as the holy grail of thermal performance” says Geraets. It’s one of his goals to change this belief.