Completed as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Edinburgh 2024-2025, these material studies sit somewhere between architectural fragments and sculptural objects. Without scale, spatial purpose, or weathering responsibilities, the objects focus attention instead on ‘what if?’ regenerative material combinatorial possibilities. The artefacts were constructed from traditional recipes for earth and fiber construction that were hand-mixed and manually compacted into custom-made wooden formworks. Each object includes an element of earth construction combined with other natural materials including hempcrete, wood, and thatch.
Constructed with care from modest, heterogeneous, local materials, the objects revalue natural material systems, which are readily available and sensorially rich but have largely been supplanted in contemporary construction practices by high carbon, industrialised materials dependent on global supply chains.
From left to right, the assemblies are:
1: mass earth (clay-rich soil + straw) + pine + broom corn thatch
2: ‘engineered’ soil: sand/silt/gravel + clay and soldered steel just because.
3: ‘engineered’ soil + hempcrete in pine frame.
4: light earth / mass earth (based on the University of Plymouth’s cobBauge project)
Funding: SSHRC Innovative Initiative Grant: Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models
Related: Archi-fringe ‘Reciprocities’ Exhibition
Woolly Walls, Forgotten Fleece Tales Exhibition