Abstract
This paper presents the design and building of an experimental pavilion using a novel technique of extruded cob manufacture. Design Research is presented as the co-exploration of a sequence of semi-controlled variables by a shifting body of researchers, facilitators, students, and makers where authorship becomes suffused amongst these collaborators. This co-created knowledge is rightly presented as a paper co-authored by the student interns and academics involved. Phases of architectural design, material investigation, manufacture, and construction are discussed as an episodic series of inter-connected prototyping dialogues between human, machine, and material actors; and as emergent making where embodied knowledge is inherent in the processes of manufacture and construction. In ‘Cob Club’ - situated between UWE’s Centre For Print Research and School of Architecture & Environment - design research proceeded as a series of foolish exchanges that reveal the creative benefits of unmanaged collaborative spaces within the rational processes of research institutions.
Keywords
earth-building; prototyping; co-exploration; foolishness
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1927
Citation
Jorgensen, T., Burch, J., Shoulder, N., and Amato, T. (2026) Cob Club: co-exploratory earth building experiments, foolish in technique and form, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1927
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Included in
Cob Club: co-exploratory earth building experiments, foolish in technique and form
This paper presents the design and building of an experimental pavilion using a novel technique of extruded cob manufacture. Design Research is presented as the co-exploration of a sequence of semi-controlled variables by a shifting body of researchers, facilitators, students, and makers where authorship becomes suffused amongst these collaborators. This co-created knowledge is rightly presented as a paper co-authored by the student interns and academics involved. Phases of architectural design, material investigation, manufacture, and construction are discussed as an episodic series of inter-connected prototyping dialogues between human, machine, and material actors; and as emergent making where embodied knowledge is inherent in the processes of manufacture and construction. In ‘Cob Club’ - situated between UWE’s Centre For Print Research and School of Architecture & Environment - design research proceeded as a series of foolish exchanges that reveal the creative benefits of unmanaged collaborative spaces within the rational processes of research institutions.