Rammed earth heritage in the city of Granada: an hypothesis of intervention for a Moorish house

Earthen architecture heritage, once considered an expression of poor architecture, has been forgotten, altered or straight demolished through centuries. It represents a resource indeed, a valuable testimony of a constructive tradition that, besides possessing a remarkable historical-constructive appeal, offers an inventory of materials and technological solutions that can teach us so much still today. ICCROM surveys affirm that the 80% of world heritage sites are raw earth architectures, therefore the problem of their maintenance assumes a primary role today. Here is presented an intervention on a Moorish House in the upper Albaicín (UNESCO World Heritage from 1994), an historical district of the city of Granada; there lies an interesting seventeenth-century artifact, a rammed earth building, enriched with decorative arabic motives and completed with a functional system of wooden slabs and cantilevers, originated from Toledo’s constructive technique. This building, nowadays victim of a worrying degradation process and static instability, it’s safeguarded by a recovery plan operating in Albaicín district. In this research, an initial archaeological analysis (carried out cooperating with the LAAC – Laboratorio de Arqueologia y Arquitectura de la Ciudad) has been followed by further cognitive investigations preliminary to the drafting of a rehabilitation project, respectful of materials, formal and constructive peculiarities of this architecture.