It all started with a request from American AgCredit for a monumental rammed earth lobby wall that would express the relationship between agriculture and art. In October of 2013, this letter came into our office from Don Tomasi, Principle at TLCD Architecture in Santa Rosa, California:

I am the Principal-in-Charge for my firm for a new headquarters office building for American AgCredit, to be located in the Airport Business Park north of Santa Rosa. I am considering proposing a rammed earth wall at the main building entry, behind the reception desk. There is a potentially intriguing link between between my client's agricultural mission and an earthen wall, and I'd like to explore the possibilities with your firm if you are interested.

My answer to Don, “Am I ever interested!”, but little did I know in October of 2013 where saying yes to TLCD, AgCredit, and an art wall adorning the reception area of an office tower was going to lead us.

Building a forty-foot long, twelve foot tall, 16” thick stabilized rammed earth wall comprised of multiple soil types is relatively straightforward for our team. After all, we have been building much bigger and more complicated wall systems for years. Our site-assembled and crane-set forming protocols are well established, as are volumetric mixing, conveyor delivery, and pneumatic compaction. In fact, we’re quite proud of all the cool things we’ve invented and built over the years that allow us to control consistency and wall quality on projects even larger than this one.

I especially liked the idea of building a wall for American AgCredit, a bank whose sole mission is lending money to farmers. All of us at Rammed Earth Works appreciated the link between growing crops in earth and building a wall of earth in the lobby. The owners wanted us to incorporate soil from all of the regions served by the bank into the wall - Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and across California. This wasn’t exactly practical, given the long hauls and budget constraints, but I did see how it was symbolic of the diversity of soil and agriculture.

OK, so they wanted a rammed earth wall made up of multiple soil types, each yielding a different color and a slightly different texture. The wall was going to represent the reach of AgCredit, but we needed to create the pallet using soils that were close to the project site. Our color lab has gotten really good at developing mix designs from site soil and quarry crushings that conform to an architect’s color preferences, and by altering particle size gradations we can change the surface texture. I felt pretty safe saying we could meet their expectations on color and strata.