ADOBE

ADOBE (corrupted to "dobie" by Anglo-Americans), a type of construction used principally in the Rocky Mountain plateau and the southwestern United States. The method came from North Africa via Spain and was introduced into the Southwest by the Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century. Most of the Spanish mission buildings were made of this material. Wet clay and chopped hay or other fibrous material were mixed together and then tramped with bare feet. This was molded into bricks and sun dried. Mud was used as mortar. Adobe was widely used to build forts and trading posts as far east

and north as Nebraska. In the twentieth century, the adobe look emerged as a popular residential building style in southwestern cities and suburbs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Spears, Beverly. American Adobes: Rural Houses of Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

EverettDick/a. r.

See alsoBuilding Materials ; New Mexico ; Pueblo .

adobe. Sun-dried unburned clay or earth building-brick or -block (clay-bat) made with straw, found in England, Spain, and Latin America, The Netherlands, the southern USA, the Middle East (e.g. high-rise buildings in Yemen), bronze-age Mesopotamia, Africa, etc. Compare cob, pisé de terre, and tabia.

Bibliography

Bourgeois (1989);
Davey (1961);
Dethier (1983);
Romero & and Larkin (1994)

a·do·be / əˈdōbē/ • n. a kind of clay used as a building material, typically in the form of sun-dried bricks: [as adj.] adobe houses. ∎  a brick of such a type. ∎  a building constructed from such material.

adobe A silty clay, often calcareous, found in dry, desert-lake basins. This fine-grained sediment is usually deposited by desert floods which have eroded wind-blown loess deposits. The term is of Spanish origin.

adobe A silty clay, often calcareous, that is found in dry, desert-lake basins. This fine-grained sediment is usually deposited by desert floods which have eroded wind-blown loess deposits. It is widely used locally as a building material. The term is of Spanish origin.

adobe unburnt brick dried in the sun. XVIII. — Sp., f. Arab. aţūb, i.e. AL-2, ṭūb brick.

adobe (ədō´bē): see rammed earth.