When thinking of earthen materials at architectural scales, we seem to default to a single standardized form: the brick. There are good reasons for this, such as its scalability and our desires to systematize process. But what other sensibilities and directions can we extract from the material of earth itself and the processes it undergoes? From its raw state and point of extraction from the ground; its workability to form, mold, build up, or be carved into; to the many changes of state it undergoes, from plastic to vitrified, we can observe how it responds to atmospheric qualities of the environments that it comes from, that its worked in, and that it constitutes. These stages can generate far more insight than can its usual final finished state alone (the brick).
This course will investigate the potential of dirt and give it the full attention it deserves as part of a natural, sustainable, and imaginative building practice. How can we elucidate its capacity to serve our discipline beyond being—increasingly—a veneer or finish, and restore its role of bearing more “weight”—in multiple senses—within the architecture itself? Students will investigate this through hands-on engagement with the material and through physical model making techniques with an emphasis on being highly experimental.
