Clay Rotunda - SE MusicLab

A circular undulating clay wall 5 m high with a 6 m radius built using a method of robotic clay aggregation developed at MAS DFAB and in my thesis project Adaptive Clay Formations.

The Clay Rotunda is a cylindrical structure made of clay that serves as the outer shell of the SE MusicLab. Located inside the Gurtenbrauerei in Bern, this high-fidelity music auditorium combines sustainable building materials with computational design techniques.

With a diameter of nearly 11 meters and a height of 5 meters, the structure features a thin wall width of only 15 cm, showcasing the strength and versatility of unreinforced clay.

Using a mobile robotic system, over 30,000 soft clay bricks were aggregated on-site over a span of 50 days to construct the Clay Rotunda.


Years	2020-2021
Location	Gurtenbrauerei, Bern, Switzerland
Context	Construction project realized by Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich
Role	research & development, programming lead, on site construction
Team	David Jenny, Coralie Ming, Edurne Morales Zúñiga, Jomana Baddad, Indra Santosa, & Anton Tetov Johansson
Project partners	Gotham Design, Lehmag, Seforb & Brauchli Ziegelei

See project on Gramazio Kohler’s website for more information and video.

Edurne Morales Zúñiga & In-Situ Fabricator

In-Situ Fabricator