Nader Khalili, an architect who developed low-budget adobe housing for emergency shelter and poverty-stricken areas, died March 5 of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to his son, Dastan. He was 72.
Khalili founded the Cal-Earth Institute in the desert near Hesperia, where students learned how to build his dome-shaped houses. He also taught architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture for many years.
His simplest design consisted of oblong plastic bags filled with dirt and held in place by barbed wire, a "super adobe" structure that cost under $500 to build. His other model was a fired-clay "ceramic" house that was more refined and could accommodate the rich colors of fired clay bowls and vases.
In lectures and demonstrations he proposed his super adobe structures as a housing solution for the poor in Central and South America, Africa, India and elsewhere around the world.
"Nader saw architecture as an essential social service," said Eric Owen Moss, director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture. "He was constantly looking for ways to serve the poor, disinherited areas of the world."
After an early career building high-rise apartments and parking structures in Southern California and in his native Iran, Khalili was disenchanted with what he referred to as the asbestos ceilings and lead paint walls of modern buildings. He returned to Iran in the mid-1970s and toured rural villages by motorcycle, looking at housing structures that were closer to nature.
Most of the adobe houses he saw could not withstand earthquakes and strong winds. He imagined a fired-adobe structure that would resist the elements. That led him to his ceramic house system. He then fashioned his cheaper, easier to make, bag-and-barbed-wire technology.
Back in California, Khalili "put his heart into housing for people who, in his view, had no alternatives," Moss said.
When many architects began thinking of globalization as a means, "to build Chicago in Central Africa," Moss said, "Nader wasn't in that game. He wanted to deal with the millions of people who don't have water lines. That was his priority."
In the mid-1990s the Hesperia department of Recreation and Parks created the Hesperia Museum and Nature Center to showcase Khalili's designs. Several model structures are in place. A community center will open this year.
