Tatiana Bilbao Estudio Unveils "Borrowed Earth": Rammed-Earth Columns from Local Soil in Art Omi's Sculpture Park

What Is Happening

On Saturday, October 24, at 2:00 pm, a new work by Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO — **Borrowed Earth** — opens at the Sculpture & Architecture Park (Art Omi). It is a specially commissioned project that, as the organizers describe it, embraces impermanence, participation and the quiet transformation that comes with the object's ageing.

Material and Form

The work is made of **rammed earth** — a technique rarely used in this region. The material is soil of local origin. The form is presented as elementary: a composition of columns.

It is precisely the combination of a simple geometric device and an "impermanent" material that sets the drama of the object: rammed earth changes under the influence of precipitation, erosion and time, and this change is embedded in the concept rather than regarded as a defect.

Context

Art Omi is a site oriented toward sculpture and architecture in the landscape, where temporary and materially "fragile" objects sit alongside permanent structures. Drawing on soil from the site shortens logistics and places the object within the discussion of low-carbon building strategies.

Professional Context (Editorial Note)

Rammed earth and mass timber solve the same problem by different means: both technologies rely on local resources, reduce the carbon footprint of the structure and bring the material into an open, "honest" aesthetic without decorative cladding. The difference lies in the life cycle: timber structures require protection from moisture and are designed for decades, whereas earthen ones allow for managed decay as part of an artistic statement. For practising architects, "Borrowed Earth" is a useful case study of how a client and an author agree on a scenario for the object's ageing already at the design stage.

What to Look At

• •The composition of columns as a whole: rhythm, intervals, scale relative to the landscape.
• •The surface of the rammed earth: stratification, formwork marks, the grain of the local soil.
• •The opening on October 24 at 2:00 pm at the Sculpture & Architecture Park, Art Omi.

Details of the programme and the list of participants are not disclosed in the original source — check the site's website.