Off the trailNumber 07Object making

Terra Garden

Eighty-six slip-cast terracotta modules that shade and cool a wall at Woodbury.

Kind: Ceramic installation
Where: A window nook on Woodbury University's campus
With: Michael Rodriguez
Count: 86 modules, 8 faces

A tall brick wall with a lattice of hexagonal terracotta modules hanging across it, succulents growing from some

Object making

Furniture, ceramics and panels from three years in Woodbury's digital fabrication lab. Mostly plywood, clay, and a CNC mill.

Ancient irrigation used the porosity of terracotta to move water slowly. Terra Garden uses the same thing to grow a vertical garden that shades a building.

The question was whether slip casting could make a terracotta module porous enough to sweat and strong enough to hang in numbers. Slip casting gives each module a hollow interior that becomes a reservoir for soil or water. Wall thickness controls the evaporative cooling, and thickness is a matter of time: the longer the slip sits in the plaster mold, the thicker the wall.

Hands pouring terracotta slip from a jug into a plaster mold — Pouring slip.

A plaster mold with slip settling in its opening — Letting it thicken.

A cluster of fired hexagonal modules with ribbed surfaces, a plant growing from one — Fired, planted.

CNC milling the molds gave us control over the surface, and the surface controls where the water goes. Each module hangs on tension cables anchored to compression bars below, so the whole face stays vertical and the succulents get even sun.

Three diagrams of the hexagonal lattice with clay, water and plant modules marked in blue, green and pink — Clay, water, plants: the three module types in the lattice.

Exploded line drawing of the modules, cables and bars — The hanging system.

Line drawing of a single module's cable connection in section — One connection.

Michael drilling an anchor into the brick wall beside the hanging modules — Installing: Michael fixing the anchors.

The installation in its corner between two brick walls

Close view of the modules with cables running through them

Looking up at the lattice of modules against the sky between the walls

An illustration of two terracotta modules with blue succulents growing out of them, on a sand-colored ground