launched into the Americas around 1600 A.D. Despite this powerful trajectory, mud brick construction did predate the Spanish in the desert Southwest of North America, and one finds evidence of adobe construction in many areas of the world, including China. It has been a logical outgrowth of local resource potentials (Chiras, 2000). Adobe is still a popular building method worldwide, but in North America it has suffered a similar fate as other natural building methods. In the American Southwest, the mass-production of building materials, coupled with cheap fossil fuel-based transportation, has turned adobe into a contradictory formsimultaneously looked down upon as poor peoples housing, and promoted as a retro niche of luxury homes for the rich (McHenry, 2002). The ultimate in alienation is fake adobeconventional woodframed buildings featuring mock vigas and stuccoed to look like adobe. Notwithstanding this fate, adobe is experiencing a renaissance in tandem with other natural building systems. New Mexico and Arizona are natural centres for this revival. But adobe enthusiasts are also demonstrating the applicability of adobe, like rammed earth, to non-arid climates. In New York, for example, researchers have documented over 40 adobe brick buildings around the state. Adobe homes are also found in Massachusetts, Nebraska, China and Japan. Besides needing additional insulation, the main challenge for adobe building in colder wetter climates is securing long stretches of warm and dry conditions for making and curing the bricks (McHenry, 1996). Adobe bricks come in various sizes, depending on tradition and preference. In the US, for example, the common size is 10x14x4 inches (250x350x100mm), while in Iran they are 8x10x2 (200x250x50mm). They are stacked up with a mud mortar made from the same soil sources as the soil in the bricks. Many of the concerns of rammed earth