Clay soil

Feel The Ground // Mærk Jorden

This project investigates the importance of material tactility in our designing of interiors and architecture, to enhance better living conditions for the sensing human being.

Building with the environmentally friendly and hyper tactile material, clay soil, is an ancient craft that nearly has been lost to the growing popularity of concrete and cement. But as the environmental conditions are nowadays, we must rethink the way we build. Clay soil has a lot of good properties regarding the indoor climate, if used in the construction of rooms and buildings, and it is a widespread resource that in many cases is seen as a by-product (or waste product) within construction. Clay soil is, besides all that, a material that we - humans - connect very well with. We have surrounded us with clay for ages, evolved with it, and our hands know naturally how to mend it. The clay soils remind us of where we are from, its colours and textures represents the natural environments where it rests, and can be found. The tactile feel of clay soil brings us back to earth, and connects us with our world.

Through research about building with clay soil, especially rammed earth constructions, textile designer, Iben Ramvad, has designed and created her own tactile rammed earth reliefs, with locally sourced materials from the Danish grounds, where she lives.
Throughout her experiments and knowledge collecting, she has enlarged the tactility of the rammed earth reliefs, and given them an eye-catching quality from the organic shapes casted on the sides of the clay soil blocks. This makes the clay soil surfaces come alive, and in the wandering light the reliefs changes and transforms, showing different landscapes throughout the day.

The project is a design proposal to a more sensing and environmentally friendly approach to the materials used in our architecture, and how we can mould and create surfaces with a positive effect on our lives.

Making process

The rammed earth reliefs consists of a mixture of different clays and sands sourced from the Danish grounds, and water. Some of the reliefs have hay or grounded up bricks added in the mixture, to either add strengthen or colour. The clay soil is stomped in layers, by hand, in wooden moulds with textured and differently shaped surfaces.
Right after casting, the moulds can be taken apart, and the relief left to dry over a few days. The dry reliefs are solid blocks, some resembling concrete, but with a much more appealing look and atmosphere to them.
Some of the reliefs has been coated with linseed oil after drying, which both darkened the natural colours of the clay soil and hardened the surface.

Since the reliefs are made only of natural raw materials, it can be reused or recycled into clay soil again.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.