Adobe
Adobe is the Spanish word for mud brick, a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material, usually shaped into bricks using molds and dried in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and rammed earth buildings, but cob and rammed earth are directly made into walls rather than bricks. The Romanian name for this material is chirpici. For a deeper understanding of adobe, one might examine a cob building. Cob, a close cousin to adobe, contains proportioned amounts of soil, clay, water, manure, and straw. This is blended, but not formed like adobe. Cob is spread and piled over the home's frame and allowed to air dry for several months before habitation. Adobe, then, can be described as dried bricks of cob, stacked and mortared together with more adobe mixture to create a thick wall and/or roof. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for some of the oldest existing buildings in the world. Compared to wooden buildings, adobe buildings offer significant advantages due to their greater thermal mass, in hot climates, but they are known to be particularly susceptible to earthquake damage.