Clay Rotunda / Gramazio Kohler Research

The Clay Rotunda is a free-standing earth-based cylindrical structure constituting the outer, soundproof shell of the SE MusicLab, a high-fidelity music auditorium built inside the newly refurbished Gurten Brewery in Bern. The cylindrical structure combines clay, a sustainable zero-waste building material, with computational design techniques. Featuring a diameter of almost 11 meters the structure reaches a height of 5 meters with just 15 cm of unreinforced clay. It was built in-situ by a mobile robotic system that aggregated over 30’000 soft clay bricks over a period of 50 days.

Clay Rotunda  / Gramazio Kohler Research
Courtesy of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich Courtesy of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich
  • architects: Gramazio Kohler Research
  • Location: Bern, Switzerland
  • Project Year: 2021
  • Photographs: Courtesy of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich

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