Earthen Vault House, 2022

The Earthen Vault House is an upscale Dutch holiday home, that takes advantage of the potential afforded by robotic fabrication for earth construction. The project aims to demonstrate the formal advantages of digital design and fabrication, combined with building sustainably with earth. Terrestrial is exploring this concept, by developing material, technology and process. In support of this effort, I collaborated with Diederik Veenendaal at Summum Engineering on the design of the conceptual house, with funding from the Creative Industries Fund’s Building Talent program.

Compressed earth is a sustainable and low CO₂ building material consisting of sand, clay and gravel, sometimes with lime or cement, and has a centuries-old tradition worldwide. However, typical construction methods are time-consuming and, like concrete, still require formwork. Through the robotic spraying of earth, this construction process can be automated and highly accurate, while opening up entirely new possibilities for freeform design. This concept is being explored by Terrestrial, by developing material, technology and process. This project, funded by the Creative Industries Fund, aims to imagine what a robotically fabricated earthen house could look like.

The end result is heavily inspired by thin-tile Catalan vaults, that, like earth, are made of brittle material that prefer to work in compression. Modern structures and techniques to design and build them have been explored in recent years by the Block Research Group (BRG) at ETH Zurich and others around the world, like the 2013 Bricktopia project by Map13 in Barcelona, Spain. The form of the house was discovered by using the BRG’s RhinoVAULT software, which uses a type of graphic statics (thrust network analysis) to intuitively create and explore compression-only structures.

The resulting vaulted form was cut into large earthen blocks, or voussoirs, that can be made with robotic earth spraying. Starting from the large outer frames as supports, these blocks are arranged and assembled at an angle, with each course of blocks, resting against the previous one – a technique referred to as Nubian vaulting found in Egypt, as shown above. As the voussoirs meet at the top, they form a herringbone pattern, similarly seen in Mexican vaulting, yet another historical technique.

The earthen vault hosts the main living spaces, allowing unobstructed flow and views throughout the ground floor. Private spaces such as the bathroom and bedrooms are situated below on the basement floor. Both levels are connected through the central spiral staircase which also lets more light into the living areas. The vault drops down into the basement floor, creating an intermediate space between the floors for the staircase while functioning as the structural support. Each bedroom has a private, terraced courtyard that extends and connects to the base of the rectangular openings on the upper level. The custom frames of the openings serve as a rigid keystone, allowing for the rest of the vault to be compression-only, or funicular.

The earthen vault house showcases the formal advantages of robotic spraying, and stresses how earth – a most abundant and sustainable material – could regain its economical competitiveness with the aid of parametric modeling and automated construction. Robotization allows us to approach the built environment in a very different way, and to respond to design factors that are locally relevant. Instead of allowing mass production to determine the design, mass customization makes it possible to respond to local needs and thus achieve a sophisticated design.

The design was developed with input and feedback from Jelle Feringa of Terrestrial. Additional design critics, Florian Idenburg and Edyta Augustynowicz, were invited to comment on iterations of the design.