Design Stack: A Blog about Art, Design and Architecture: Architectural Earth House

12 Oct 2014

Architectural Earth House

Architect Peter Vetsch from Vetsch Architektur, designed this group of houses in Dietikon, Switzerland. This residential settlement is set around an artificial pond and consists of nine houses, 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 bedroom and a 7 bedroom house. The living space varies from between 646 square feet (60 m2) to 2153 (200 m2) per house. This small estate is set amongst conventional housing and agricultural land and is accessed by a concealed entrance that takes you to the basement which is used for storage, access to the homes and parking space. More information and a video in the main portion of the post.

Vetsch speaks of what drove him to construct the Earth Houses.

In the Houses, the daytime areas, the Rooms that are mainly used during daylight hours, like Living Room and Kitchen, are south facing, the Bedrooms are north facing, with the stairs to the basement and bathrooms in the middle of the home which, access air and light from roof lights.

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The construction of the Ground floor is achieved by using sprayed concrete on top of the mesh. Above that a damp proof layer is added. The next layer to go on is the insulation which consists of recycled glass. Finally the earth layer that can be seeded with grass, plants or a mixture of both.