Zawiyyet Al Mayyiteen (also known as Zawyet el-Sultan or Zawyet el-Amwat) is located on the southern edge of the city of Minya and is situated between the Nile river and desert cliffs to the East. Often called the “City of the Dead,” it is considered one of the largest cemeteries in the world, measuring nearly 4 kilometers long and 300 meters wide, covering roughly 1.2 square kilometers. Zawiyyet Al Mayyiteen is not just a modern cemetery; it is built atop layers of ancient history spanning nearly 5,000 years.
The cemetery is 4 kilometers long and 300 meters wide and is situated between the Nile and Desert Cliffs.
The site is easily identifiable by the repetition of small scaled domes made of mudbricks and plaster. Each domed mausoleum belongs to a different family and ancestral lineage. The highly concentrated sea of domes is easily read as a single web structure or pattern resembling the geological landscape, its growth seems fairly gradual and responsive to the site.
Looking at the Nile from within the cemetery.
This style of burial is traditional for the region, used by both the local Muslim and Coptic Christian communities, making it a rare site of shared funerary heritage.
Mausoleums against the cliffside.
During religious holidays and annual festivals, thousands of people from Minya travel to the site to visit their ancestors, often staying in the mausoleums to share meals and offer prayers.
Interior view of domed structure.Mudbrick and plaster in various conditions.
The unique aesthetic of the domes has long inspired artists and photographers. The nearby village is also home to the museum of the famous Egyptian folk artist Hassan el-Shark, whose colorful paintings often depict the daily life and spiritual traditions of the Minya region.
Asir, or officially the Aseer Province in Saudi Arabia, was incorporated into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1934. has a population of 2.2 million. The province has a long history with artifacts dating to the bronze age. The region is known for its tribal independence, agriculture, and high-altitude culture, situated on a high plateau.
The Aseer region is characterized by a cooler climate with considerable seasonal rain. It has approximately 400 traditional settlements, many located on the high plateau at altitudes greater than 2000 meters. Buildings generally took the form of square, multistory towers. Four principal construction types developed based on the local microclimate and available materials: mud tower houses, stone rubble houses, stone apron houses, and mud and slate tower buildings.
Rijal Almaa is a town that emerged 900 ye ars ago and, given its strategic location on the route to Mecca from Yemen, it became a place of commercial exchange. The buildings are composed of stone, mud, and wood, and are constructed up to six floors. They are detailed with with white window frames, wooden shutterns, and decorative mofits, details that are characteristic of the region.
Rijal Almaa Heritage Village consists of around 60 traditional stone, mud, and wood buildings.White window frames and checkered details
Typical houses in the mountainous Asir province were made of mud reinforced with camel hair. The lower areas of the buildings were made from stone, with smaller flat stones wedged between bigger ones. The upper areas have a local flat stone between the bricks. Plaster was usually applied to the outside of the building to cover the mud bricks.
Al-Qatt Al-Asiri is a traditional interior wall decoration of the region. It is a spontaneous art technique carried out largely by women. It is typically practiced on rooms of visiting guests. Women invite female relatives of various age groups to help them in their homes, thereby transmitting this knowledge from generation to generation. The base is usually white gypsum and the patterns consist of icons of geometric shapes and symbols.
The Saudi government has developed set of architectural and urban guidelines and requirements that help guide the design and urban development process to align with the authentic local architectural style of each geographic area across the Kingdom. Guidelines, maps, and more information can be found here: https://architsaudi.dasc.gov.sa/ar
Located in Hiwali – a small rural settlement of about 25 farming households deep in the Satmala mountain range in India – the Hiwali school was initiated by a joint venture by the Give Welfare Organization and Armstrong Robotics & Technologies. Every aspect of this project was unique – starting from the site being a narrow rural strip only accessible via a 50 ft hike from the village road to the actual use case of the building – not just a normal school but somewhat of a daycare functioning 10 hours a day, 365 days a year. The school serves as a “home base” for the remarkable teacher Keshav Gavit – known for his innovative teaching methods and his students who write with both hands and memorize over a thousand tables.
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The design, starting with the water moat that protects the site from runoff, is extremely adaptive to the environment and sensitive to the materials that are easily accessible yet still retain desirable qualities. Modular blocks shown below house the office, computer room, science room, projector room, and library, each arranged diagonally to allow for both expansion towards the mountain and to protect and shape the sometimes aggressive winds.
pkinception
The exposed brick walls of these modules share the load for a gently sloping roof that zigzags over the school, allowing for a very open, inside-and-out relationship everywhere within the school – shaping areas that are interconnected and flexible, while still maintaining focused spaces required for a school, spaces and volumes shifting between 5 and 8 feet – in scale for the children that use the space. Materially, the school is very interesting – the bricks that comprise most of the modules avoid the use of ubiquitous reinforced concrete to shift towards a local production, but also retain excellent thermal lag – absorbing the daytime heat and radiating it during the cool mountain evenings. These bricks are left entirely exposed on both interior and exterior surfaces, allowing for easy maintenance and the avoidance of commercial plasters, which degrade and are expensive.
The cow dung and earth flooring present in the high plinth allow for comfort for both sitting and sleeping. This application of mud and cow-dung paste, often called leepan, is an ancient practice known for not only thermal mass properties but for insect-repellent and antiseptic benefits as well. Every part of the building is designed to be used and maintained, even the exposed brick being an easy platform for nailing boards onto, was intentional.
Proto-architectural Regenerative Material Models Reimagining Architecture Through Earth, Fiber, and Recipe-Based Making
Completed during a Visiting Research Fellowship at University of Edinburgh (2024–2025), Proto-architectural Regenerative Material Models explores a speculative territory between architecture and sculpture. These works resist conventional expectations of scale, program, and durability, instead positioning themselves as material inquiries, asking not what buildings are, but what they could become.
Freed from structural obligation and weathering performance, the objects foreground a central question: what if regenerative materials were recombined in new ways? Each piece operates as a tactile hypothesis, testing the expressive and constructive potential of earth-based systems when paired with other natural materials such as hempcrete, timber, and thatch.
The models are constructed using traditional recipes derived from vernacular earth and fiber building practices. Materials are hand-mixed and compacted into custom wooden formwork, emphasizing labor, tactility, and process over industrial precision. Across the series, assemblies include combinations such as clay-rich mass earth with straw, engineered soil composites, and hybrid systems integrating hempcrete within timber frames.
Built from modest, heterogeneous, and locally sourced materials, the work repositions natural construction systems as both viable and desirable. In doing so, it challenges the dominance of high-carbon, industrialized materials that rely on globalized supply chains, proposing instead a materially circular and sensorially rich alternative.
Expanding on the research, the Archi-fringe Reciprocities Exhibition frames earth construction through the lens of culinary practice. Here, building becomes analogous to cooking: a process of combining ingredients, adjusting mixtures, and refining techniques.
The exhibition presents four proto-architectural models alongside their corresponding “recipes,” detailing ingredient ratios and preparation methods for mass earth, light earth, and rammed earth systems. Rather than isolating final objects, the exhibition foregrounds process—displaying formwork, templates, tamping tools, and even drop cloths repurposed as tapestries. A continuous “how-to” video further demystifies the act of making.
Installed within a former steelworks along Edinburgh’s canal, the exhibition integrates seamlessly into its industrial context. Notably, when two models were damaged in transit, they were simply reconstituted on site—crushed, rehydrated, and re-tamped—demonstrating the inherently circular lifecycle of earth materials.
The research continues through Woolly Walls, Forgotten Fleece, a traveling exhibition that revisits Scotland’s largely forgotten tradition of fiber-reinforced earth construction. These architectural-sculptural objects are composed of earth, clay, stone dust, hemp shiv, and sheep’s wool—reinterpreting the historic mudwall or cob technique.
In this contemporary adaptation, carded wool fleece functions as a stabilizing agent, introducing tensile strength while producing a distinctive soft, tactile surface. The resulting textures invite touch, challenging the visual dominance of architectural representation and reintroducing haptic engagement as a core spatial quality.
Each piece is fabricated through an intensive manual process: freshly shorn wool is washed, carded, and combined with earth-based mixtures before being tamped into custom formwork. The exhibition presents a range of “recipes,” each generating variations in color, density, and texture, accompanied by collaged material studies.
While not scaled building models in a conventional sense, the works suggest alternative futures for construction—ones grounded in locality, circularity, and material intelligence. As the exhibition travels across Scotland—from Langholm to Dundee, Dumfries to Thurso—it reactivates regional craft knowledge while proposing new directions for regenerative design.
Funding & Research Context
This body of work is supported by the SSHRC Innovative Initiative Grant: Earthworks: Architecture’s Regenerative Material Models. Development of the earth–wool mixtures was conducted during an open residency at Cove Park in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One-Cut Rammed Earth Wall
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.
Red-Ochre Wall
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.
Dragon-Scale Wall
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.
Magnificent Collapse
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.
The Bare Skin of the Earth
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.
Earthen Steps of Hierarchy
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.
Awaji Armor Wall
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.
Fertile Earthen Floor
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.
The Rust of Clay Tiles
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.
“Touch” – soil texture art workshop“Eat” – diatomaceous earth
Meeting Point, a shelter designed by Fuinneamh Workshop Architects in Cork, Ireland, is a quaint pavilion-like building. It was designed to house gatherings to discuss the environment and biodiversity in Tramore Valley Park. The architects desired to create a building that captured and framed the surrounding area, while also operating as a mechanism to draw park visitors into the space to observe and contemplate.
Formally speaking, the design is “deliberately rudimentary.” Its fundamental composition is two end walls and four columns, resting atop a hoggin floor(earth, sand, and stone mix), and covered by a traditional Irish hipped roof structure.
Longitudinal section“The plan of the building references the architecture of a miniature temple. “
The materials for this project were also locally sourced. More specifically, the earth used to make the walls, columns, and floor. In addition, its roof is an open timber frame with a reed thatched finish.
Locally sourced rammed earth.
Being environmentally conscious and site-specific is a typical trait of Fuinneamh Workshop Architects’ buildings; As such, the architects took great care in being deliberate about materials; the hoggin floor references the style of streets of Cork up to the beginning of the last century. Earth, timber, and reed were chosen as the primary materials because of their organic properties, allowing them to be returned to the landscape at the end of the project’s lifetime. Finally, the surrounding subsoil properties were analysed and researched, graded, and tested to ascertain the optimum soil mix for application in construction. This was integral to the success of the project. Without these measures, the structural stability of the project would have been compromised in Southern Ireland’s wet, windy, and unforgiving environment.
Project data
Start on site July 2022 Completion May 2024 Gross internal floor area 40m2 Construction cost £24,725 Construction cost per m2 £620 Architect Fuinneamh Workshop Architects Client LennonTaylor KinShip, Cork City Council, and Creative Ireland Structural engineer Civil and Structural Engineering Advisors Project manager Seán Antóin Ó Muirí Principal designer Seán Antóin Ó Muirí Approved building inspector Kieran Ruane Earth Analysis Department of Engineering, Munster Technological University Main contractor Wiseman Construction Services CAD software used LibreCAD Predicted design Life 50 years
Salara Hotel located in Baja California Sur, Mexico is a hotel that was designed by Taller Héctor Barroso, with the vision to connect living with what emerges from the sand. Consisting of various residences ranging from 14,000 to 20,000sqft, it establishes a shared environment of both community and nature.
Completed residential unit
All the buildings are created with rammed earth. Allowing the natural raw materials that are available on site such as earth, chalk, lime or gravel, allowed a cost effective method to creating these vacation homes. The rammed earth also regulates the interior heat within the residences.
Creating the foundation and establishing electrical.
The main focus of the use of material not only focused on sustainability but allowing guests to interact with light shade and surrounding vegetation as well as highlighting aspect of the geological features.
Proposed space highlights the geography of Baja alluding to the material.
Exterior pathways to each unit
Pathways connect the various 10 spaces allowing those to relax in their lifestyle while accessing each others units in community. The sand covered court allows for local tournaments and spaces to bring one another together.
Sandwiched between the inhospitable Chihuahuan Desert and the majestic Davis Mountains, the Marfa Ranch is situated on a low rise with dramatic views of pristine desert grassland in all directions.
The house, which cuts a low profile, comprises eight structures organized around a central courtyard shaded by native mesquites.
“The design leans into an early regional paradigm found commonly on the ranches of far West Texas, where casual, low-slung homes partially enclose an inner court”
“These homes are often stone, brick, or adobe, one room wide and U-shaped — opening to an inward veranda and surrounding the court that opens to the east, shielding against the seasonally persistent north-western winds.”
Borrowing from the area’s earliest structures, the rooms of the house are organized around a courtyard, a cool respite from the sun-drenched desert grasslands beyond the walls. The house embraces the expansive landscape with lightweight breezeways and porches made of recycled oil field pipe.
Built of two-foot-thick rammed earth walls, the home protects its inhabitants from the extremes of the region — heat, cold, and wind — while allowing them to connect with the landscape through lightweight breezeways and porches, a mirador perched above the main bedroom, and an outdoor walkway connecting to a pool and hot tub.
The studio used three million pounds of earth to create the rammed earth walls, which were chosen to reflect a connection to the landscape. This material was used for the structure as well as for the finishes.
“Rammed earth is a simple material that reinforces the connections to the land and the landscape,” said Harris. “It is a labor of love to commit to the use of earth when building, and the craft of the construction is evident throughout.”
“As a counterpoint, most all the surrounding rooms open to both the interior and exterior landscape and are positioned to accept the cooling breeze reaching out to the exterior foreground and distant horizon.”
The bedroom opens onto a covered porch with views of the surrounding landSliding rusted steel doors lead to additional semi-outdoor areas
Location: Meulan-sur-Yvelines, France Year: 2023 | Built: 940 m² Architect:Tolila+Gilliland Client: Fondation l’Élan Retrouvé Construction: timber structure with raw earth brick infill Photos: Cyrille Weiner | Drawings: Tolila+Gilliland
Tolila+Gilliland is a Paris-based practice founded by Gaston Tolila and Nicholas Gilliland. Tolila holds a DPLG Architect Diploma from the Paris-Villemin School of Architecture and an engineering degree in civil engineering and urban planning from INSA Lyon. Gilliland holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University and an undergraduate architecture degree from the University of Kansas. The two met through a humanitarian architecture competition in 2001. They later established their practice, grounded in material logic, environmental response, and construction using bio-based and geo-sourced systems.
The Gilbert Raby Center sits within a campus of buildings dedicated to addiction medicine and treatment. The client, Fondation l’Élan Retrouvé, needed a building that could bring together adult therapeutic workshops and related support spaces while avoiding the rigidity typical of institutional care environments. The program includes therapeutic workshops, a day hospital, a laundry, a pharmacy, and medical offices, all organized within a new two-story building of 940 square meters.
The site is sloped and wooded. Each level meets the ground directly, allowing independent access and reducing reliance on vertical circulation. Movement is horizontal and legible, supporting autonomy within the therapeutic environment.
The plan is organized symmetrically around a central interior hall. This space acts as both circulation and environmental core. It is unheated but tempered through solar gain, thermal mass, and controlled ventilation. A linear skylight introduces diffuse zenithal light, moderated by removable shading. Raw earth brick walls stabilize temperature, with night cooling supporting summer performance.
Construction follows a clear material system. A timber structural frame is paired with raw earth brick infill and wood-fiber insulation. Timber provides structure and assembly. Earth provides thermal inertia and regulation. The exterior is clad in pre-greyed larch shingles, with exposed timber elements and wood joinery aligning the building with its wooded context.
Form is restrained and derived from site and program. The building adapts to slope, organizes around a central void, and maintains a consistent sectional logic. Workshops and medical spaces line the central hall in a clear rhythm. The architecture operates through clarity, proportion, and material presence.
The project demonstrates how therapeutic architecture can be shaped through environmental moderation and spatial legibility rather than institutional form. By aligning structure, climate, and circulation, it supports autonomy and stability. It also advances a model of low-carbon construction where timber and earth define both performance and spatial quality.
Hao is widely considered a pioneer of “Social Architecture” in Vietnam. His philosophy revolves around the idea that architecture should not just be for the wealthy, but a tool to improve the lives of the marginalized. The firm is famous for combining traditional building techniques (like rammed earth, bamboo, and thatch) with modern structural engineering. They prioritize low-carbon footprints, using materials that are sourced locally. In an effort to harbor their social architecture approach, during the design and construction of the school, 1+1>2 often involved the villagers ensuring the community feels a sense of ownership over the finished school.
The Hang Tau Kindergarten and Primary School, located in the remote mountains of the Son La province in Vietnam, is a masterclass in how architecture can serve as both a functional shelter and a cultural bridge. Designed to serve the ethnic minority children of the region, the project is a testament to the power of “pro-bono” architecture that doesn’t compromise on beauty or utility.
The school’s design is heavily influenced by the rugged terrain and the traditional architecture of the local H’Mong people. Rather than leveling the land the architects opted for a stilted structure that follows the natural slope of the mountainside. The school is made up of various materials sourced locally and/or made on-site. Foundations are made of local mountain stone with adobe bricks stacked above. Some walls even being fully constructed of stone or adobe. Frames, fences and ceiling treatments are made with bamboo and natural wood to provide breathable interiors and soft boundaries that properly integrate this new building into the village. The roof materials somewhat break from tradition, using corrugated metal to provide proper insulation and ensure the building is watertight.
Traditional H’Mong architecture
The school’s roofline, the most striking feature, is made to mimic the surrounding mountain peaks, allowing the building to blend seamlessly into the landscape. The school is divided into distinct “blocks” for the kindergarten and primary levels. These blocks are connected by covered walkways and open-air bridges, creating a sense of a small, interconnected village rather than an isolated institution.
Although the primary purpose of the building is education, the school serves as the beating heart of the village. Often in remote Vietnamese regions, schools also become communal spaces for adults outside of school hours. The Hang Tau school serves to strengthen the sense of community that is heavily embedded in the Vietnamese culture. This is not only embodied by the programming of the school but the architecture itself as it also preserves the culture through the use of “local aesthetics”. Allowing the students to take pride in their culture and value their roots.
Given the tropical climate, the buildings utilize high ceilings and perforated walls (often made of local wood or brick) to allow cross-breezes, eliminating the need for mechanical cooling. These apertures also increase and incentivize connection the natural landscape which is a core value in Vietnamese culture and architecture. The school provides modern education while instilling the values of traditions of past generations. Giving the students access to successful futures and influential pasts.
