The increasing popularity of the so-called alternative materials in the industrialized nations presents an engaging and worthy challenge to the structural engineering community. Schooled to work almost exclusively with the "Big Four" - concrete, masonry, steel, and wood - many engineers are reluctant, or overly cautious, about working with material they never read about in a textbook. This reluctance can reach ironic proportions as when, for example, an engineer freshly trained in America or Europe returns to his home in the Middle East or Africa, but is unwilling to work with the vernacular sun-dried brick (adobe) architecture that has been of his own culture for a millenium, and is still, generally, all that the local population can afford. Upwards of 30% of the world's population is estimated to live in earth (chiefly adobe) housing, yet there is astonishingly little mention, much less study, of earth construction in engineering literature or building codes.

• building codes and standards : alternative materials
• envelope materials : sustainability