Completed as part of the Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models Project
This project triangulates soil science, materials-based research, and precedent analysis to consider viability of rammed earth construction in climatic contexts with wide temperature swings and precipitation.
Using four built contemporary rammed earth projects located in temperate climate zones as case studies, we analysed regional soil type based on existing open-source data and constructed 1:20 model fragments using rammed earth as the primary construction material. Each model isolates a single condition that illuminates how case study projects use earth as structure, enclosure, and/or interior wall assembly, and how it is assembled either in-situ or through pre-fabrication.
Martin Rauch’s Haus Rauch, the archetypal rammed earth project, uses soil excavated from site as structure and enclosures, and situates the building in response to the resultant excavation. Boltshauser Architekten’s Kiln Tower for the Brickworks Museum uses pre-fabricated rammed earth as load-bearing structure and enclosure, uniquely using post-stressed steel cables to hold the earth blocks in compression. Herzog and de Meuron’s monolithic Ricola Kräuterzentrum is strikingly monolithic, constructed of 1m x 4m long prefabricated rammed earth blocks and incorporating four 5m diameter window openings. Finally, Reiterman and Sassenroth’s Chapel of Reconciliation is incorporates an oval interior rammed earth enclosure that receives light from both a lightwell above and a vertical screened enclosure beyond.
At 1:20, the models represent the constructional logics of each case study projects; at 1:1,the cracks, fissures and eroded edges of the models speak to wider material challenges of working with rammed earth.
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, Daphne Stams, Asha Stott, and André Cusson