Rammed / Mass / Light / Poured (coming soon) / 3d printed Earth (coming soon)
Ongoing Research / Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models Project
This page is a repository of raw earth recipes and assembly techniques organised by construction method. Raw earth is the inert geological matter devoid of organic material found below topsoil. When activated through the addition of water or fibers, raw earth with sufficient clay content can be compacted into load bearing walls, pressed into bricks and stacked, smoothed onto lattice as infill, pressed between framing members as insulation, poured into breathable moulds, and printed into continuous extrusions. What makes the earth ‘raw’ is that it uses clay as a binder rather than using carbon-intensive lime or cement.
Gaining a material literacy of earth as a construction material is akin to cooking, engaging one’s sense of touch, smell, even taste, as a guide. Over the course of the two-year funded ‘Earthworks’ project, we developed earth construction recipes using soil from the Carleton campus, from an urban construction site, from a local Ottawa quarry, and from landscape materials such as for rammed earth, compressed earth block, mass earth/cob, light earth insulation, and 3d printed earth.
Through this materials-based research, we came to understand earth less as a material dug from the ground and used directly in construction and more as a material matrix of different particle sizes bound by clay. This expanded material reading of ‘earth’ situates it as much as a material dug from the ground as an assemblage of found and recycled aggregates bound together with clay and reinforced by fiber.
Refer to related project pages for final models here:
Raw Earth_Proto-architectural Models
Raw Earth_Woolly Walls
Raw Earth_Expressive, Ornamental, Insulative
Raw Earth_Drip, Gust, Burn
Refer to How to Videos on my Vimeo Site here
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
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