This article reflects on the principal tendencies in earthenarchitecture during the last decades and the actual challenges inthis field at a global scale. Projects from several cultural and geographicalcontexts were selected, emphasizing on Latin America,in order to identify different ways of constructing and producingbuildings of earth. Several opinions on the reach of earth as a buildingmaterial, its manifestations in social housing and its links tothe theory of sustainability are considered. Important advances arefound in the fields of housing, public buildings, recommendationsfor construction in seismic regions, bioclimatic architecture, tourisminfrastructure initiatives and technological innovation focused onthe study of materials and their behavior in construction systems.As future research subjects are recommended: normalization ofconstruction with earth towards the industrialization of systemsand processes; the technological innovation oriented at improvingexisting dwellings in seismic regions; education at all levels; andthe creation of alternative models of do-it-yourself building in socialhousing.