Back to Earth. Three crafting recipes.
Research Colloquia - Back to Earth. Three crafting recipes. Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025
Date: November 5, 2025
Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Place: BI; Studio 3
Speaker: Anna & Eugeni Bach
Researchers for "Internatlities" / Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2025
Abstract: Earth has been a common material in construction since prehistoric times. Its physical properties allow for a variety of applications, such as rammed earth walls, adobe blocks, or compacted earth, which do not require firing, or clay bricks and stoneware pieces, which do require an energy input for their production.
Given its geological characteristics, the Spanish Mediterranean Arc, and Catalonia in particular, has a long-standing tradition of earth construction developed over millennia through knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Technical expertise, specific tools, and locally-sourced raw materials have shaped the built landscape in this region, maintaining a balance that minimises externalities, fosters knowledge, and creates value.
With the advent of the second industrial revolution the 1960s, and a society convinced in the abundance of oil and energy, the industry underwent a transformation, abandoning much of this balance in favour of cheaper, mass-produced, and more rapidly manufactured materials from distant sources. During this period, much of the craftsmanship, workshops, and businesses that held this knowledge disappeared, replaced by an industry that overlooked externalities in its processes.
The new ecological awareness that began to take shape in Spain in the late 1990s, reassessed these processes and technical know-how, which once functioned as a closed-loop system in harmony with the environment. This renewed perspective has allowed for the survival and revival of some of these crafts, merging traditional expertise with a responsible, clean, and forward-thinking industry, aware of the importance of internalities in production.
The Labor room presents a display of production processes and earth-based construction elements developed by three Catalan companies committed to minimising externalities –Cerámica Cumella (fired stoneware / innovation in processes), Fetdeterra (compacted earth / industrial innovation and Rajoleria Quintana (firedcircularity), clay / recovery of traditional processes).
Aligned with this vision, the central piece of the room consists of 200 compacted earth blocks from Fetdeterra, simply stacked, serving as a display platform for the tools, processes, and products used daily by these three companies. Once the exhibition is finished, both the blocks and the tools will return to their workshops to continue being used.
