Earth as Architecture: What Delcy Morelos's Soil Installation Teaches Indian Designers

When Colombian artist Delcy Morelos installed Origo — a 24-metre-wide structure built entirely by hand from over 30 tonnes of raw soil and clay — inside London's Barbican Centre, she was not simply making art. She was making an argument: that earth, the most abundant and ancient of all materials, is also among the most architecturally and ecologically potent substances on the planet. The installation, shaped to evoke the interior of a mother's womb, required no steel, no concrete, no synthetic binders — only compressed, shaped earth and the labour of human hands. For India's sustainable architecture community, a country where rammed earth, mud-brick, and compressed earth block construction have deep roots in vernacular traditions — from the havelis of Rajasthan to the wattle-and-daub homes of rural Tamil Nadu — Morelos's globally celebrated intervention arrives as both a validation and a provocation. As India races toward its 500 GW renewable energy target by 2030, the buildings that house this clean energy economy also demand a rethinking. Earth-based construction, long dismissed as 'backward,' is re-emerging as a serious zero-carbon design strategy.

Why Earth Construction Is a Serious Sustainable Design Tool

The embodied carbon crisis in construction is no longer a peripheral concern for Indian developers and architects. The built environment accounts for approximately 38 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, with the production of cement and steel representing the lion's share of that figure. In India specifically, the construction sector is one of the fastest-growing sources of industrial carbon output, as urbanisation drives demand for new housing, commercial buildings, and energy infrastructure at an unprecedented pace. Against this backdrop, earth-based construction materials — compressed earth blocks (CEB), rammed earth, adobe, and cob — offer a compelling alternative. Their embodied energy is a fraction of fired brick or reinforced concrete. They are thermally massive, meaning they absorb heat during the day and release it at night, dramatically reducing cooling loads — a critical advantage in India's hot and arid climates across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Morelos's Origo, while an artistic installation rather than a habitable structure, demonstrates that earth at scale is structurally coherent, aesthetically powerful, and symbolically resonant — all qualities that architecture must possess to be culturally adopted.

Indian architects such as Anupama Kundoo and the Auroville Earth Institute in Puducherry have for decades pioneered compressed earth block technology and vaulted earth construction in ways that rival any European practice. The Auroville Earth Institute, working under AVEI director Satprem Maïni, has trained builders and architects across 42 countries. Yet within mainstream Indian construction, earth architecture remains marginalised. What Morelos's Barbican installation does — by placing 30 tonnes of raw earth at the centre of one of the world's most prestigious cultural institutions — is shift the perception of earth from a material of poverty to a material of intention, sophistication, and climate intelligence.

How Earth Design Connects to India's Clean Energy Infrastructure Push

India's renewable energy buildout is not only a story about solar panels and wind turbines. It is equally a story about the buildings and communities that surround that infrastructure. Under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana scheme, the Government of India is targeting rooftop solar installations across one crore households, with MNRE overseeing implementation. SECI has floated tenders aggregating tens of gigawatts of capacity, and major developers including Adani Green Energy, ReNew Power, Greenko, NTPC Renewable Energy, and JSW Energy are building utility-scale solar parks across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The workers' townships, visitor centres, operations buildings, and community infrastructure that serve these parks represent a massive construction opportunity. Choosing earth-based materials for these structures — where site conditions permit — would dramatically reduce the embodied carbon footprint of India's clean energy economy, creating a genuinely whole-system approach to decarbonisation. Rammed earth walls paired with rooftop solar is not a contradictory image; it is the logical conclusion of integrated sustainable design.

Several Indian solar developers have already begun integrating bioclimatic design principles into their project offices and training centres. Greenko's campuses in Hyderabad and ReNew Power's operational facilities have incorporated passive cooling strategies. The next step — embracing earth materials at scale — is both technically available and economically viable. Compressed earth blocks cost between 30 and 50 percent less than fired brick when locally sourced, reducing both financial and carbon costs simultaneously.

What This Means for India's Energy Transition

India's journey to 500 GW of renewable energy by 2030 demands not only gigawatts but a coherent philosophy of sustainable development that extends beyond the power plant fence. The built environment — the offices, factories, homes, and cultural spaces of a decarbonising India — must itself decarbonise. Earth architecture, validated by contemporary practitioners like Delcy Morelos on the world's biggest cultural stages and refined by Indian pioneers at the Auroville Earth Institute and institutions like CEPT University in Ahmedabad, offers a credible, scalable, and culturally rooted pathway. MNRE and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) have begun incorporating embodied carbon considerations into green building frameworks, but explicit policy support for earth-based construction materials remains nascent. That gap is both a policy challenge and a design opportunity.

Watch for Indian architecture schools — CEPT, SPA Delhi, and the School of Planning and Architecture — to integrate earth construction more formally into curricula over the next 24 months. Watch also for GRIHA and IGBC green building rating bodies to update embodied carbon metrics in ways that reward earth materials. Delcy Morelos built her womb-shaped world from 30 tonnes of soil. India has the soil, the tradition, and the climate imperative to build its own.