MONO Architekten    Germany   This ensemble of constructions with perforated facades made of sedimentary layers of red-tinted rammed earth is situated in the city of Neuenburg am Rhein, close to the German, French, and Swiss borders. Connecting the urban center to the green zones

Peris + Toral arquitectes   Spain   The Barcelona practice of Marta Peris and José Manuel Toral was commissioned by the Balearic Housing Institute (IBAVI) to build this residential complex in Ibiza. It is designed to get the best in terms of sunlight and sea views as well as to harness

Taller Héctor Barroso   Mexico   One of the open tournaments of the professional tennis circuit is held on premises where the facilities, presenting a simple wall of rammed earth, blend with the desert landscape. A series of platforms molds the terrain to form playing courts, which

Edra arquitectura km0 - Àngels Castellarnau Visús bunyesc arquitectes   Spain   The Huesca firm Edra Arquitectura km0 – led by the architect Ángels Castellarau – and Josep Bunyesces are the authors of this project in Parc del Falgar, a parkland in the Barcelona municipality of Franqueses de Vallés. Different uses – administratio

Boltshauser Architekten   Switzerland   To ensure proper shear transfer in the horizontal joints, the rammed earth walls are provided with a vertical post-tensioning system of steel cables. This can be re-tensioned to compensate for settlements of the rammed earth...

Régis Roudil    France   Commissioned by the Présidence de la République, this daycare for 24 children is located at the heart of the Palais de l’Alma in Paris, within the monumental complex. Built with timber and rammed earth, it stands in the garden behind the 19th-century

David Chipperfield Architects   Greece   David Chipperfield Architects Berlin has won the contest to revamp and enlarge the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, located in the capital's Exarcheia neighborhood, which possesses one of the world's major collections of prehistoric and anci

Equipo 01 / Jesús San Vicente   Spain   FITUR, the annual International Tourism Fair held at Madrid’s IFEMA trade exhibition premises, takes place this year from 18 to 22 January. The pavilion designed by Equipo 01 / Jesús San Vicente for Paradores Nacionales is getting the FITUR Best Stan

Atelier Masomi    Niger   In rural Niger, markets run on a weekly basis, but the fast demographic growth of the remote village of Dandaji led to building of a new marketplace for daily shopping, on the original site around the ancestral tree villagers have always gathered at.

Juan Salamanca Balen - SALBA estudio   Colombia   Located 20 kilometers to the north of the municipality of Uribia, in Colombia’s La Guajira department, this school for the indigenous Wayuu community is immersed in a desert landscape. The project seeks to reflect the pillars of the organization behi

Invisible Studio   United Kingdom   In the vegetable garden of The Newt – a hotel in Bruton, a town in the southwest English county of Somerset – stands this building by Invisible Studio. This is the third that the British architecture group founded by Piers Taylor has completed for th

Kéré Architecture   Senegal   For the very first time in the history of the prestigious German institution, one of its centers scattered all over the world will occupy a building expressly designed for the purpose. Rising behind a wall that keeps out traffic noise, the building e

RIMA Design Group   Mexico   ¡ San José del Cabo belongs to the municipality of Los Cabos, in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. It has a desert landscape, with a large variety of cacti, that strikes a contrast with the sea close by. Taking advantage of the topography of

Anna Heringer   Austria   Light, smells, colors, temperature, textures, sounds… It must be overwhelming to leave a mother’s womb and get born into this world. What should the very first space we ever experience be like? What kind of material should it be made of to make newbo

Equipo de Arquitectura    Paraguay   Taking inspiration from the vernacular constructions in the area, and built for a friend of the architects, the house starts out from a consideration: that of the intermediate space as a privileged one, a place for welcoming and sharing. Raw earth, i

Foster + Partners   France   Located close to the Canal de la Robine, a museum rises like a temple consecrated to the Roman heritage of a city which was an important node in the network of roads of Gaul. The main spaces are organized in a single level on a plinth, under the prot

Federico Colella | Re:lab   Mexico   The Pan-American Development Foundation of Mexico proposed to refurbish the sports center of Xoxocotla Municipality, which was structurally damaged by the 2017 earthquake, and to build a new community center for the town. The work was carried out thr

Oualalou + Choi   United Arab Emirates   The Moroccan contribution to the next World Expo seeks to demonstrate how traditional construction systems have the potential to give rise to more sustainable development models. The world’s largest facade of rammed earth encompasses twenty-two recta

Renzo Piano Building Workshop   Uganda   On the shore of Lake Victoria, a pediatric hospital seeks to provide medical care to young residents of the area while serving as a center for the training of local physicians and nurses. Equipped with three operating rooms and eighty beds, the hospi

Tatiana Bilbao   Mexico   Built with compacted earth, the hotel blends with the landscape and includes a set of amenities inspired by the ruins and by classical architecture; villas born form interconnected cubes that rotate on their axis; and hotel rooms that are pure cubes

Mario Cucinella Architects   Italy   A fruit of the collaboration between Mario Cucinella Arquitectos – based in Bologna and New York – and WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project), the Italian company specialized in 3D printing, this circular housing prototype made of soil is located in

Sharon Davis Design   Nepal   The New York practice of Sharon Davis worked with the NGO Possible Health and the Nepalese government in raising new medical facilities in Achham, one of Nepal’s poorest and most remote regions. Surrounded by mountains in the Seti River Valley, the c

Dellekamp Arquitectos   Mexico   Conceived as a refuge, the Cabo House stands on a series of platforms built with local earth that descend adapting to the slope of the site. From these telluric platforms, walls of the same material, rammed earth, rise in parallels to frame views tow

With its 130 million inhabitants, Mexico is the tenth most populated nation in the world, and among Spanish-speaking countries the one with most demographic weight. Add to this its strategic position, its important economy, and its powerful culture,

A philosopher who loved architecture, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, wrote in the year 1822 that making holes in the earth was perhaps more natural than raising poles or pillars on the surface, and that it perhaps made much more sense to think of the

In the village of Rudrapur, located in the Dinajpur Disrtict of northern Bangladesh, the German architect Anna Heringer – in conjunction with Veronika Lang and the non-profit organization Dipshikha – recently completed a therapy center for people wit

Fernando Vela Cossío   Earth has been the quintessential building material of farming people. Thanks to its being so extraordinarily available and cheap, combined with its bioclimatic performance and its capacity to blend into the environment, raw earth has been a constant

One of the main challenges of building with earth today is that of transforming its artisanal character, and begin using it in industrialized building processes. Such was the goal pursued, for instance, in the design and construction of the Gugler P

Luis Maldonado   Compressed Earth Block (CEB) is a building material that is habitually used to raise walls using conventional construction techniques. It can come it different sizes, but the most common one is 15x15x30 centimeters. The most unusual aspect of the CEB

Luis Maldonado   Thanks to its environmental benefits and also to its aesthetic qualities, the different techniques applied to construction with mud still have a future in architecture.