Earthen Dwellings and Structures

B. V. Venkatarama Reddy is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Chairman of the Centre for Sustainable Technologies in Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He holds a doctorate in structural engineering from IISC, where he has been working since 1979. He has a strong interest in structural masonry, mechanics of materials, energy in buildings, green buildings, low carbon construction materials, and recycling of solid wastes into construction materials, and has jointly authored a book on alternative building materials and technologies, edited a couple of books on masonry, and developed a large number of low embodied carbon construction materials and techniques. Prof Reddy has served as consultant for several innovative projects on alternative building technologies and as a member of several technical committees in Bureau of Indian Standards and other government agencies. He was the DAAD Visiting professor at Bauhaus University, Germany and a VisitingProfessor at University of Bath, UK. He is a member of many professional bodies including the Indian Concrete Institute, ISCEAH, IC-NOCMAT, British Masonry Society and RILEM. Monto Mani is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Sustainable Technologies and Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing in IISc Bangalore. He is an Architect, with a master's degree in Civil Engineering. As part of his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, he developed a systems-framework identifying societal attitude as a critical determinant of sustainability. Dr Monto's research deals with the interdisciplinary domain of sustainability science, specifically focusing on its theoretical basis, and application in the architecture and design of buildings- his Sustainability and Design lab (SuDesi) comprises multi-disciplinary researchers working in diverse areas of sustainability. He is best known for his contributions in functional performance of buildings, PV performance and building integration (BIPV) and sustainability evaluation in design. He has extensive interdisciplinary publications pertaining to sustainability. Prof. Pete Walker is a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers (UK), and has been Director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials at the University of Bath since 2006. He has published over 250 articles on his research work on natural building materials, covering earthen construction, crop-based building materials and timber engineering. He teaches materials and structural engineering to undergraduate and postgraduate civil engineering and architecture students at the University of Bath.