Design Office——HIRAMATSUGUMI
Shido Soil Museum was designed by HIRAMATSUGUMI, an architecture practice based on Awaji Island, Japan. They are exploring a form of architecture that naturally emerges from the land on which we now stand—architecture in its essential state. The project was developed in collaboration with Kinki Kabezai, a long-established manufacturer of earthen wall materials, as a space dedicated to the exploration, display, and public rethinking of soil as an architectural medium.
Project Information
Location: Awaji, Hyogo, Japan
Completion: 2022
Opening: 2023
Area: approx. 181 m²
Program: Museum / exhibition space / material experience center
Shido Soil Museum is not conceived as a conventional museum, but as an immersive environment where soil becomes the main subject of space, material expression, and public engagement.
Overall Concept
The project reconsiders soil not as a hidden or secondary construction material, but as a visible and experiential medium. Rooted in the idea of “Jimon”—patterns and traces formed by geological movements, topography, and the surface of the earth—the museum translates the imagery of strata, erosion, rupture, and terrain into architectural space.
Rather than presenting soil as a nostalgic or purely vernacular material, the design frames it as a contemporary spatial language. Walls, floors, and surfaces evoke excavated ground, exposed layers, and cracked earth, turning the building into a spatial interpretation of the land itself.
Material Use and Construction Details
The project makes extensive use of Awaji soil, drawing on the island’s long history of earthen construction and craft. Soil is employed not only as a building finish but as the central medium through which color, texture, thickness, and tactility are expressed.
What is especially significant is that the project does not rely on a single earthen technique. Instead, it presents a broad spectrum of soil-based applications, including rammed earth elements, layered earthen walls, thick plastered surfaces, carved textures, and earthen flooring. Through these varied treatments, soil is revealed as a material of both technical and sensory richness.
One of the most compelling aspects of the museum is its use of localized wall-making techniques to produce distinct spatial atmospheres. Certain walls recall rammed earth construction, where compacted layers create a sense of geological depth and mass. Others are formed through thick earthen plaster and hand-finishing techniques, allowing cutting, scraping, cracking, and layering to remain visible on the surface.
1. One-Cut Rammed Earth Wall (一刀版築塀)
This wall directly adopts the logic of traditional Japanese rammed earth construction. Soil is placed into formwork and compacted layer by layer, producing a dense, stratified mass. A deliberate vertical cut is then introduced into the wall, intensifying the image of a fractured geological layer.
This technique emphasizes mass, compression, and stratification, while turning the wall into a spatial representation of tectonic rupture.
2. Red-Ochre Wall (赭土の壁)
This wall is made by mixing a small amount of iron oxide into Awaji soil. Its surface is then carved and shaped with a trowel to produce textures resembling a cut mountainside or exposed earth section.
Here, the focus is less on structural mass and more on color modulation and sectional expression, allowing the wall to evoke the visual depth of geological terrain.
3. Dragon-Scale Wall (龍鱗壁)
The Dragon-Scale Wall is formed through repeated plastering and carving, generating a highly articulated surface texture.
Rather than presenting soil as a flat finish, this method highlights its capacity for ornament, rhythm, and tactile richness, transforming the wall into a textured field that captures light and shadow.
4. Magnificent Collapse (土崩壮麗)
This technique uses an unusually thick earthen coating to evoke the dramatic face of an excavated cliff or collapsed earth section.
Its significance lies in its exaggerated thickness and sculptural presence, pushing earthen finishing beyond conventional wall treatment and toward an effect of erosion, weight, and exposed terrain.
5. The Bare Skin of the Earth (大地の素肌)
In this treatment, common additives such as reinforcing fibers or stabilizing materials are intentionally reduced. The wall is allowed to dry and crack naturally through the interaction of soil and water alone.
Instead of concealing fragility, this method turns shrinkage, cracking, and imperfection into the very expression of the surface. It presents earth in a more raw and vulnerable state, where instability itself becomes an aesthetic quality.
6. Earthen Steps of Hierarchy (土階八等)
This installation takes its motif from the four-character phrase “Doka Santō”—a reference to the humble palace life of Emperor Bi of Qin, who is said to have governed an era of peace while living simply. Drawing from this idea, the design expresses a presence that is materially modest yet spatially dignified, like a palace in character.
This technique is less about wall-making itself and more about the symbolic use of earthen mass as architectural form. By shaping soil into stepped geometry, it gives earth a sense of monumentality and ceremonial presence, showing how a humble material can still convey gravity, order, and spatial authority.
7. Awaji Armor Wall (淡路鎧壁)
This work adopts the yoroi-kabe technique—traditionally used in earthen boundary walls for cultural heritage sites and vernacular architecture—but reinterprets it here by reversing its usual vertical orientation. Through this inversion, the wall more strongly emphasizes a sense of weight, density, and the raw ruggedness of the earth.
8. Fertile Earthen Floor (豊沃の土間)
The dramatically undulating earthen floor represents the earth itself as a swelling, rising ground plane. In doing so, it overturns the conventional assumption that an interior earthen floor should be finished flat according to architectural norms.
9. The Rust of Clay Tiles (窯土の寂び)
This work incorporates Awaji clay roof tiles, one of the island’s local ground-based industries. The tiles on the wall are intentionally left unfired so that, over time, they darken with age, expressing a weathered quality akin to the patina and quiet austerity associated with a tea room.
This technique is especially compelling for its emphasis on time and material aging. By refusing to complete the tiles through firing, the project allows change, darkening, and imperfection to become part of the design. It presents earth not as a fixed finish, but as a medium that continues to transform, carrying associations of patina, memory, and wabi-sabi-like atmosphere.
Sensory Experience and Related Activities
The museum also hosts a range of hands-on art workshops that invite visitors to touch and work with soil. In the café, several foods are designed to mimic the visual appearance of earth, and some even incorporate edible soil-like material, including diatomaceous earth.
