Part 1 (1/2)

Cottage Building in Cob, Pise, Chalk and Clay

by Clough Williams-Ellis

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The exhaustion of the first edition of this book, within so short a time of its publication, makes it difficult to add ht of subsequent research and experience, to revise what had already been written

Any book that see difficulties, however partially, was fairly assured of a welcome, but the soreat volu is, I think, to be attributed chiefly to its description of Pise-building

Of the very large number of letters that reach me from readers of the book, quite ninety-nine out of every hundred are concerned with Pise

The otherhave their advocates and exponents, but it is clearly Pise that has caught the attention of the public as well as of the Press both at home and abroad, and it is to this method of construction that I have chiefly devotedof the book as it first appeared

In our English cli is a summer craft, and the sle sureatly to the sue of what is possible with Pise and of what is not

Most of the new data have co of Mr Strachey's demonstration house, an account of which is included in the present volu carried out with the help of the National Physical Laboratory; but the results, though exceedingly encouraging, are not yet ready for publication[1]

The fact that Pise-building is essentially a ”Dry-earth method” makes necessary the creation of artificial summer conditions under which the experi the past winter As a result of these researches, a considerableof the present building season[2]

Much helpful information is also likely to come to us from the Colonies, particularly froreat activity in Pise-building, and where there is no ”close season” such as our winter imposes upon us here

It is instructive also to note that great interest in Pise-building has been aroused in Canada and in Scandinavia, the two countries that ont to associate particularly with ti

Fro of ”the lues of Pise as compared with their traditional wood-construction

If these great ti the pinch, the advocates of wooden houses for Englandtree, but up a tree that is not even there

The timber famine is, in any case, a cala, that is to everyone, for even a Pise house must still have a roof and floors and joinery

But to invoke the ti conditions seeularly perverse and unhelpful Pise, at all events, see field for exploration than most of the other heterodox ested, too often upon credentials that will not bear any but the most cursory scrutiny

Pise, even now, is still in its experimental infancy

It has yet to prove itself in the fields of National Housing and of coe scale

Lastly, Pise does not clai problem There is no solution unless, by son appreciates by 200 per cent

CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS

22, South Eaton Place, London, SW1

_May 1920_