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permaculture - [permaculture] Nader Khalili, internationally renowned architect, author, and educator, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th.

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  • From: Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, international Permaculture List <permaculture@openpermaculture.org>, ppg@lists.riseup.net, eastbaypermaculture@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [permaculture] Nader Khalili, internationally renowned architect, author, and educator, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th.
  • Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:08:53 -0800


hi everyone
a very dear friend has passed from this world

....... seek not water, seek thirst ......

On Saturday March 29th, from 11:00 am throughout the afternoon, Nader Khalili's surviving family and students invite all who were his friends and supporters to remember and celebrate his life, words and works, at his Cal-Earth Institute, in Hesperia, California, amongst his visionary architecture. www.calearth.org
Rather than flowers, please send a contribution to a charity which helps the poor and refugees, in his name.

Nader Khalili, internationally renowned architect, author, and educator, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th.

Khalili was known for his innovation of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses and the Superadobe (sandbag and barbed wire) construction technique also known as Earthbag. He developed the SuperAdobe technology in 1984, in response to a NASA call for designs for human settlements on the Moon and Mars. He had been involved with Earth Architecture and Third World Development since 1975, and was a U.N. consultant for Earth Architecture.

In 1991 he founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), in Hesperia, CA, which teaches his philosophy and earth architecture technique. His sustainable solutions to human shelter have been published by NASA, and awarded by the United Nations, and the Aga Khan award for Architecture, amongst others.

He authored six books, including his international best-selling auto-biography, "Racing Alone," (his newest book "Emergency Shelter," available this summer) as well as two highly-acclaimed volumes translating the poetry of Rumi, "Fountain of Fire" and "Dancing the Flame."

Born in Iran as one of nine children, his quest was to empower the world's poor and refugees to build homes using the earth under their feet. He was a prominent American leader on the value of ethically based architecture, where the needs of the homeless are considered above all else.

Inspired by the mystical poetry of Rumi, (whose poems he studied and translated, from an early age) his architecture was distilled from the timeless principles of this universe and its timeless materials -- the elements of earth, water, air, and fire, and has been described as "Poetry crystallized into structure." Laura Huxley, Aldous Huxley's widow, called Khalili the "practical visionary."

He was a quiet hero and a gentle humanitarian, who wrote: "No one can prove there is a meaning to life. I must make my own life meaningful. That is all."

He is survived by his wife Iliona, son Dastan, daughter Sheefteh, eight brothers and sisters and extended family.

<http://www.calearth.org/whatnew.htm>Other articles about his life and work.
<http://www.calearth.org/khalili.htm>Nader Khalili's Biography.

The Burial Ceremony took place on Tuesday March 11th at the Sontag Greek Amphitheater, Pomona College, and at Oak Park Cemetery where he is buried. The main entrance is at the end of Oak Park Drive, cross street with Sycamore Avenue. (909) 399-5487 After the burial, the wake/refreshments were at the Seaver House, Pomona College close to the Eco-Dome and the organic garden.


how very close
is your soul with mine
i know for sure
everything you think
goes through my mind

i am with you
now and doomsday
not like a host
caring for you
at a feast alone
with you i am happy
all the times
the time i offer my life
or the time
you gift me your love

offering my life
is a profitable venture
each life i give
you pay in turn
a hundred lives again

in this house
there are a thousand
dead and still souls
making you stay
as this will be yours

a handful of earth
cries aloud
i used to be hair or
i used to be bones

and just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
i'm love and
i'm always yours

- Rumi



NADER KHALILI, Architect and Author


Nader Khalili, California architect/author is the world renowned Iranian-American Earth Architecture teacher and innovator of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses, and of the Superblock construction system. Khalili received his philosophy and architectural education in Iran, Turkey, and the United States. He has been a licensed architect in the State of California since 1970, and has practiced both in the U.S. and abroad. Since 1975 he has been involved with Earth Architecture and Third World Development, and is a U.N. (UNIDO) consultant for Earth Architecture, the Ceramic Houses and SuperBlock Technologies. In 1984 the award for "Excellence in Technology" went to him for the innovation of the Ceramic Houses system, from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects (CCAIA), and in 1987 Khalili's project "Housing for the Homeless: Research and Education" received a Certificate of Special Recognition from the U.N. International Year of Shelter for the Homeless and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Since 1984, Lunar and Space habitation have become an integral part of his work; his "Magma Structures" design, based on the Geltaftan (Ceramic Houses) System, and "Velcro-Adobe" system (later to become the Superblock/ sandbag and barbed wire system) were presented at the 1984 NASA symposium, "Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century". He was subsequently invited to Los Alamos National Laboratory as a visiting scientist. He has presented papers and has been published since 1984 in several symposiums and publications including those of NASA, and the "Journal of Aerospace Engineering" for which he was awarded by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Khalili was a member of the team of the "Lunar Resources Processing Project," along with the Princeton -based Space Studies Institute, McDonnell Douglas Space Systems, and Alcoa.

Since 1982 Khalili has been directing the Architectural Research Program at SCI-Arc, California. He is the director and founder of the Geltaftan Foundation, and the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) since 1986. Current projects include the Sustainable Desert Village and Hesperia Museum & Nature Center, the Rodeo/Arena for the Mojave Desert city of Hesperia, erosion stabilization of Hesperia Lake, a FEMA related project. At Cal-Earth he continues building and testing prototypes in Earth Architecture for inclusion in the Uniform Building Code. Recent work has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Katharine Tremaine Foundation, the Rex Foundation, the Leventis Foundation, Our Ultimate Investment Foundation, the Turner Foundation, and the Flora Family Foundation.

His five books were written while evolving these techniques and his philosophy of architecture. "Racing Alone", and "Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture: How to Build Your Own", while developing the Geltaftan "Earth and Fire" system for building ceramic houses; "Sidewalks on the Moon", while designing for the moon, a journey through tradition and technology; and "Rumi, Fountain of Fire", translations of 75 poems from the Persian language mystic poet, Rumi whose wisdom concerning humanity and the elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire are the inspiration behind his work; and "Rumi, Dancing the Flame", 300 Rubayiat short poems of Rumi.



Khalili's "Works and Words" have been widely exhibited and published in the US and internationally including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and broadcast on national and statewide TV channels such as the BBC World Service and Voice of America. Over 100 hands-on workshops and lectures have been conducted in the U.S. and abroad, from Princeton University/ Princeton New Jersey, International Space University/MIT Boston Mass., to inmates of Chino and other prisons, from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) / Washington D.C., Los Alamos National Laboratory/ New Mexico, to many Native American Reservations, the Eight Northern Pueblos/ San Juan New Mexico, and from children in South Central Los Angeles hospitals to the Universities of California, national and international universities.

Khalili's architectural works also include: the design of a future-oriented community for 5,000 inhabitants for Future City/Villages, Intl. in New Cuyama, California in 1988 (prototype structures were built on-site, and pre-fabricated vault modules were built, fired and glazed at a brick factory); Malekshahr of Isfahan, a community for 20,000, which was designed and partially constructed by 1979; the Middle East headquarters of Dupont/ Polyacryl was designed and supervised, completed in 1978; over 100 projects of conventional buildings ranging from high-rise to single residence.

Geltaftan Foundation/ Cal-Earth: 10376 Shangri La Avenue, Hesperia CA 92345.
Tel: (760) 244-0614 Fax: (760) 244-2201
Email: calearth@aol.com
website: www.calearth.org
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  • [permaculture] Nader Khalili, internationally renowned architect, author, and educator, passed away at the age of 72 on Wednesday, March 5th., Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, 03/27/2008

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