Ongoing Research / Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models Project
While earth construction performs optimally in hot arid climate zones where earth’s thermal mass modulates diurnal temperature swings, there is a resurged interest in contemporary applications of earth construction in temperate, regulated climate zones. Within Canada — a country with seasonal temperature swings from -30C to +30C — the wider history and contemporary applications of earth construction are patchy. This project advances existing research on 3d-printed earth, cobBauge, and poured earth, modifying methods developed by researchers elsewhere in the world to suit Ottawa’s climate and bioregion. All assemblies use clay as a binder and incorporate clay-rich soil and fibers from Ottawa’s bioregion.
The project includes three scale wall prototypes that combine structure with insulation: a cobBauge assembly of mass and light straw earth; a flat-formed poured mass and light earth wall; and a 3d-printed earth wall with integrated insulation and fiber thatch cladding. The assemblies subvert expectations about earth’s construction as monolithic, rectilinear, and thermally modulating, instead illustrating earth’s capacity to be formally expressive, structural and insulative, and/or ornamental.
Funding:The SSHRC (Canada’s Social Sciences Humanities and Research Council)-funded ‘Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models’ uses models and prototypes to creatively speculative about raw earth — earth stabilised by clay rather than cement or lime — as a construction material in temperate, regulated climate zones.
Earthworks Research Assistants: Olive Lazarus, Ann-Catherine Lemond, Cameron Penney, Nadia Kriplani, Vincent Tourangeau, Luis Panchi Galvan, Sharmeen Risvi, Asha Stott, and André Cusson
Research Assistants: Olive Lazarus and Sharmeen Risvi / Photography: Luis Panchi Galvan
Poured Earth / Based on existing research by Charlie O’Geen and Katherine Page Harris
Research Assistants: Vincent Tourangeau and Asha Stott / Photography: Luis Panchi Galvan
3d Printed Earth / Based on research by Lola Ben Alon’s Natural Materials Lab, Columbia University
Research Assistant: Sharmeen Dafedar / Photography: Luis Panchi Galvan