Poured Earth Collaborative (PEC) investigates the future of earthen construction as a response to human-made global warming. We aim to resist mass production and building commodification by creating spatial divisions out of the land itself. PEC creates workflows that bring in as little material as possible to a site, extrudes a structure from the earth on-site, and reuses formwork materials in the final construct through a cradle-to-cradle design process. 

Our investigations take four forms: built works, material physical testing (site soils, test blocks, mix design), graphic diagrams of process and critique, and academic writing. The built works are propositions, meant to investigate space through form and division. The propositions transform site-based materials into sculptures about barriers, light, and texture. Fabric formwork avoids limitations of planar formwork and meets clay-based material needs.

PEC’s testing matches site soils to controlled mix experiments by measuring particle size distribution and soil characteristics of a sample. We are developing a lexicon of traditional plant-based fibers and surface treatments. Physical testing of the dried and formed material allows PEC to enter the conversation of modulus of rupture, compression, and other structural benchmarks.

PEC seeks through these investigations -- physical, graphic, and written -- to create a response to climate change. Built form defines the human animal’s understandings of civilization, what it means to dwell together. PEC uses this investigation to tease out how a traditional material can move forward into the contemporary vocabulary of form and reknit relationships of human habitation within the beyond human world.

PEC Methodology

Our approach begins with site and material. We work with diagrams, models, and prototypes, and return to the facts of site derived building methods to avoid carbon impacts of materials and their displacement.