adobe
ah-DOH-bee
Sun-dried brick made from a mixture of clay-rich soil, water, sand, and straw — one of the oldest building materials in the world. Also the name for the clay soil itself. Adobe construction is found wherever the climate is dry enough for the bricks to cure and the soil has the right proportion of clay: the American Southwest, northern Mexico, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Sahel. An adobe wall breathes with the day — absorbing heat in the morning, releasing it at night — and returns to the earth it came from when abandoned.
Etymology
From Arabic aṭ-ṭūb, the brick, via Spanish adobe. The Arabic article al- was assimilated into the word's Spanish form. The material and the word traveled together from North Africa to Spain to the New World.
Notes
Software brand Adobe got its name from a 14.2-mile long stream in Santa Clara County, California called th Adobe Creek. The stream ran behind the houses of Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Charles Geschke. In Palm Springs, working for the art festival Desert X, Ronald Rael used computer programming and machinery to create corrugated adobe walls.
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