October 23, 2024
Meet the Designers Building With Earth
The particular challenge in this case was the tropical climate: humid year-round with heavy rain during the monsoon season. To contend with this, the construction process for the 2,109-square-foot building was a two-year game of trial and error, and a close collaboration with local builders who had never worked on such a project before. Multiple types and mixes of material, and different levels of pressure during compression, were tested to find the right combination of texture, thickness, strength, and durability.
To ensure quality control, each batch of earth was hand-tested before application. Nonetheless, as rammed earth isn’t considered a load-bearing material in Thailand, a reinforced cement structure, as well as additional cement in the earthen mix itself, was required.
The material diversity—earth was collected from various locations around Thailand—is manifested in the building’s appearance. Its distinctive multihued facade features a range of blacks, reds, beiges, and whites, which are turning heads. “People stop and ask questions, wondering what it is, as they’ve never seen buildings like these before,” Suphasidh says.
More than its unique aesthetic, though, she hopes this building shows that if material knowledge is applied in a way suited to its locale, advances in building methods can happen outside contexts where precision and standardization are the norm: “My vision is that progress happens and is equally acknowledged at every location. Each specific culture and climatic zone warrant their very own idiosyncratic responses to the shared challenges in the climate crisis experienced globally.”
Keru Mbuubenne
Worofila, Senegal, 2021
Senegalese architecture practice Worofila was founded in 2019 with the intention to use natural materials to create “bio-climatic” architecture that is both born out of and suited to the local context. Now headed by Nzinga Biegueng Mboup and Nicolas Rondet, it is literally breaking new ground—showing how earth-building and crafted methods of construction can be used to address modern challenges.
Among their projects is a residential building in Sendou, which is about 25 miles from the capital, Dakar, where they modified and extended an unfinished concrete residential building using compressed and stabilized earth bricks. The result was a series of volumes inspired by traditional compound homes for extended families, which are usually composed of a series of private structures organized around a central communal space.
Here, the need was for a home suited to the hot climate. Roofs were covered with blocks and panels made of typha—a type of common cattail reed with insulating properties—and included large openings for natural ventilation, while a pergola on the eastern side casts shadows during the day, protecting the interior from direct sunlight. “The house is very well ventilated,” says Mboup. “I spent a night there myself, and you really feel the breeze inside.”
Budgetary constraints, she says, made this project “a testament to how to build economically”—offering both challenges and opportunities. Almost everything was custom-made, which meant they had the freedom to come up with innovative bespoke solutions, but also required a meticulous working relationship with the craftspeople who made the building.
But this low-tech method of construction is very much part of Worofila’s philosophy, as is the local sourcing of materials. “The material is locally available, it’s natural, and it requires very little energy in order to produce these bricks, because they are sun-dried.”
Mboup explains that they are striving to prove the value of iterative, localized refinement, rather than inflexible typologies imposed without regard to the real conditions of a place. “The approach is really one of adaptability to the context and that can be applied anywhere,” she explains. “The more specific you are, the more universal you are.”
This year, the practice—in collaboration with an engineer—initiated a series of workshops to test out the fundamentals of building with earth. “It’s important because we’ve come from a paradigm where we have tested and certified normative bricks coming from factories. But if we want to truly democratize [architecture], we need to get to a point where anybody can understand how a material works and also produce the building components themselves. Whatever earth you have, you can do a series of tests using your senses—smell and touch—and, based on that, know what you can do in terms of construction and adjust the mixes yourself.”
Casa Catarina
Taller Hector Barroso, Mexico, 2022
In 2022, architecture practice Taller Hector Barroso completed a family home in Valle de Bravo, a holiday destination about 100 miles southwest of Mexico City. The building, which in June of this year was given an award for excellence by the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, was created to blend into its surroundings while also making the most of its glorious vista. Overlapping indoor and outdoor spaces and large expanses of glass allow views across the landscape, while its earthy palette of materials camouflages it against the backdrop. “The quality of detail, materials, and construction are superb, resulting in a well-crafted house in complete harmony with the land it inhabits,” the judges of the RIBA award said in praise of the building.
The most notable nearby landmark is a rocky form that sits by the building. This geological structure provided inspiration for the house’s form—it is designed as a series of mostly single-story spaces clustered near each other, which gives it the sense of being a collection of boulders. “It’s a project that embraces its surroundings,” says studio founder Hector Barroso. “It feels like it emerges from the mountain that’s right beside it—like the rocks underneath the mountain are inhabited.”
He also took inspiration from the surroundings when selecting material: rammed earth and stone on the outside, timber beams, and volcanic rock floors inside. “In all my projects I try to work with natural material—I believe that materials that embrace time and nature age perfectly with the environment,” the architect says.
Barroso had worked with rammed earth before, drawn to its acoustic and thermal properties, but also to the sensory experience of touching, smelling, and living with it, which keep him coming back again and again. “It’s a great material—I love it in all its senses,” he says. “For me, it’s kind of alive.” For the Valle de Bravo home, he was interested in testing and demonstrating how working with local soils and makers can adapt rammed earth for different contexts, negating the need to bring in resources from outside.
As with all crafted materials, working with it comes with the risk of inconsistency and slow progress, but Barroso believes this is part of the charm. “Being handmade, there are accidents and mistakes. But if a material is natural, those things become an essential part of it. In the end it looks as it must look.”
COURTESY RORY GARDINER 
COURTESY RORY GARDINER
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