REINVENTING TRADITIONAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUSTAINABILITY: Contemporary Earth Architecture of Sri Lanka

In the search for sustainability,Sri Lanka like most countries has been looking at modern and new materials and technologies as much as at the indigenous practices.Despite having possessed a resourceful repository of traditional technologies and practices,their reinventions,however,have remained somewhat unrecognized.This stems partly from the absence of focused research as well as sponsored or recognized programs to promote and experiment with the new possibilities of their applications in modern building.Sri Lanka’s traditional architecture has been extensively studied,and there exists much literature on the art and construction of the buildings.However,a greater focus has been on recording the variety of their spatial patterns together with the architectural compositions and appearances of buildings and their architectural details(De Vos 1988;De Silva 1990;Lewcock et al.2002).While De Vos and De Silva have constructed a set of patterns of traditional Sri Lankan houses in settlements,Lewcock et al.have traversed the entire range of traditional settlements and buildings and particularly their architectural splendor.Karunaratne has often highlighted the marvel of timber architecture(1984),while many archeologists have discussed the structures and constructions of buildings in the context of the history and archeology of Sri Lanka’s ancient civilizations.In contrast,Dayaratne(1999,2000,2003,2007)shows how its indigenous architecture has been inherently sustainable and how some of the modern architects have employed their principles in creating architecture that is appropriate to culture and kinder to the environment.This paper provides a general introduction to the traditional materials of Sri Lanka and examines in detail how earth architecture has been revitalized as a sustainable approach to building.

Geochemical models of core-mantle differentiation

The core-mantle differentiation process is one of the most significant events in the Earth’s early history,which profoundly affects the Earth’s internal structure.According to the simple core-mantle differentiation mechanism,elements such as iron and nickel should be extracted from silicate to form an iron-rich proto-core,and the residual silicate materials form the proto-mantle.However,the composition of the lower mantle and the core remains controversial,which largely affects the partition of elements,thus the referred differentiation process of the Earth.In recent years,many experimental studies on the partition coefficient of siderophile elements between metal and silicate under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions have put forward new ideas on the issues around Earth’s core-mantle differentiation.Meanwhile,some researchers suggested that the redox state of the Earth’s mantle changes during its formation and evolution,and many isotope geochemistry studies support that some enstatite chondrites have a common nebular precursor as the Earth.These new studies bring dispute on the Earth’s building materials,which dominates the core-mantle differentiation process and largely affects the partitioning behaviors of elements during the core-mantle differentiation.This chapter aims to review recent experimental studies on the siderophile element geochemistry and discussions on the Earth’s building blocks.