Experimental earth composite shells

Earth is a widely available, cheap and sustainable building material, used in traditional and vernacular architecture in many places worldwide. Common earth building technologies make use of adobe bricks and tiles, rammed earth, fired bricks, etc. In this paper, however, the focus is on an innovative thin-walled paraboloid shell structure made with earth-natural fibre composite material on an inflatable formwork. The main advantage of using a soil-fibre composite is that a certain tensile and bending resistance can be provided that is necessary in specific regions of the shell when it is subjected to particular loads. Material research, pneumatic formwork formfinding and shell construction technology development has been performed by student teams. In April 2018, a series of 1m and 3m prototypes has been constructed in the context of an international student project. This contribution reports on the overall process as well as on the prototype construction.