A rammed earth zoo in New Zealand by Assembly Architects Limited.

Fastcompany.com recently published an article on the 5 Trends Shaping the future of Architecture. They asked 2015’s most innovative companies to predict how the industry may evolve.

One of their predictions was for the re-use of ancient materials like timber and rammed earth.

“The newfound availability of cross-laminated timber panels, engineered to be stronger and more fire-resistant than traditional wood, has allowed architects to build taller and taller with timber. But wood probably isn’t the only ancient building material we will rethink in the next few years, Weyer predicts.”

“There are new methods constantly being tested,” he says, like rammed earth, an ancient technique (using a dirt mixture) that is still used to build houses in places like Australia, South Africa, and the southwest United States. “Technological advances in wood/timber construction have made it possible for us to re-image some well-known building types,” he explains. “I would expect that other technologies will have a similar impact in the near future.”