Savvala Savage: Rammed Earth Construction Residency, 2025
This photographic and film documentation follows a two-week rammed earth construction residency at Savvaļa in Latvia, where I participated in and documented the collective building of an experimental earth structure using locally sourced soil.
Led by practitioners from Kuidas Works and facilitated by Andris Eglītis, the residency explored rammed earth as both an ancient construction method and a contemporary ecological practice. Working directly with the land revealed the physical and sensory relationship between material, labour, memory, and place, transforming soil beneath our feet into architecture through embodied, collective effort.
The process brought attention to the intimacy between hand and material: digging, carrying, compacting, and shaping earth under changing and challenging environmental conditions.
Through this immersion, the project became an exploration of how construction can foster deeper relationships between body, landscape, craftsmanship, and space-making.
The process brought attention to the intimacy between hand and material: digging, carrying, compacting, and shaping earth under changing environmental conditions. Through this immersion, the project became an exploration of how construction can foster deeper relationships between body, landscape, craftsmanship, community-building and space-making.
Alongside the photographic series, the project is
accompanied by a moving-image documentation capturing the rhythm of the residency, the creative wonderings and explorations as well as the atmosphere of Savvaļa itself. The film reflects the spirit of the land and the culture that has formed around it, a place shaped through collective making, experimentation, and close relationship with the surrounding landscape. Through moments of labour, gathering, and shared presence, the documentation traces how people come together to co-create with one another and with the environment they inhabit. Selected photographs within the series were captured by Aleksejs Beleckis.