for @threadapalooza, 100 posts on the science of moisture in buildings in 1975, Nader Khalili cashed out of his architecture firm and motorcycled around the Iranian hinterlands for 5 years he started noticing that by far the oldest building in every village was a kiln, but why?

why not make a house out of mud bricks and fire the whole thing? his experiments were a success, a whole house could be made from mud bricks, filled with useful pottery and bricks, and fired, you could even finish the interior with a pearlescent glaze made from ground up bottles

one lesson of old barns is that moisture is the big enemy here, metal roofs are good at shedding rain and bare boards are good at letting everything dry even holes in the roof don't usually take a barn down, but here's an example of one in a decrepit state, let's think about why