Earth and machine

The work spans two material registers that rarely share the same building. Poured earth floors and hand-laid stone on one side. CNC-machined steel connectors, laser-cut perforation patterns, and precision-fabricated pivot assemblies on the other. The earthen construction takes time because it is built slowly, by hand, from materials gathered on site. The machined parts take time because they are designed to sub-millimetre tolerance, drawn in full 3D before a single piece of steel is cut, and managed through fabrication from digital model to delivered component.

A third strand runs between them: freeform concrete. Catenary vaults laid brick by brick without formwork, cyclopean concrete set with hand-placed stone, thin shells shaped to the loads they carry rather than to the timber available to mould them. It is poured and worked by hand like the earthen construction, and set out with the same geometric precision as the machined steel — the handmade and the machined meeting in a single poured surface.

The two meet most directly at the glass. A finished stone or concrete surface — hand-built, and so unique and irregular — is 3D-scanned into a point cloud, and the exact geometry of each opening is extracted from it as a template. That template drives the CNC cutting of frameless, tempered-glass inserts shaped to the freeform edge, so that a machined, accurate component seats precisely against a wall that was poured and worked by hand. The scan turns the irregularity of the handmade into data the machine can answer to.

Both are time-intensive in ways that are not immediately visible in the finished building. Fees reflect this and are not negotiated.

Where a project includes custom-fabricated components — laser-cut steel, machined parts, 3D-printed fittings, precision assemblies — a separate manufacturing management fee applies. This covers the design, detailed drawing, specification, supply coordination, and fabrication oversight of every custom part from Onshape model to site-delivered component.

Buildings solved, not styled — for clients with a demanding site, a real material interest, and patience.