Earth as Image: Adam Weismann's Green Rammed Earth Skyspace at Matiz Gallery

Earlier this week I visited Matiz Gallery in Barcelona and met with Ivonne Parra, the gallery's director. It was one of those gallery visits that stays with you. Not because of spectacle, but because of something quieter: the realisation that a material you work with in buildings can carry this kind of weight.

The work that really blew me away was Green Rammed Earth Skyspace by Adam Weismann of Claymoon Studio, a triptych of unfired clay panels, each 1,230 x 630 x 65mm, forming part of a wider series of eleven works.

Sean Ronnie Hill of RISE Design Studio with Ivonne Parra, Director of Matiz Gallery, Barcelona. May 2026

The Work Up Close

Seeing rammed earth as an art object, rather than a wall section or a material specification, reframes everything you thought you understood about it.

Each panel is raw. Wet clay compacted vertically into a mould, layer by layer, until the compression itself becomes the image. What emerges is a surface that reads simultaneously as geology and atmosphere. Subtle bands of green and mineral tones run across the three panels: not painted, not applied, but drawn out of the material through the act of making.

Stood in front of all three, the surface shifts depending on where the light hits. Close up, the texture is coarse and honest. From across the room, the three panels dissolve into something close to a landscape: a horizon line, layers of earth, the kind of depth you associate with looking rather than building.

The 65mm depth of each panel matters too. This is not a thin veneer or a surface treatment. It has genuine thickness, enough to cast a shadow from the wall, enough to read as a section through something rather than a surface applied to it. The work does not pretend to be something it is not.

Green Rammed Earth Skyspace (2026) by Adam Weismann, Claymoon Studio. Unfired clay triptych, 1,230 x 630 x 65mm (x3). Matiz Gallery, Barcelona.

Why This Matters to Us as Architects

At RISE, we use a fabric-first approach to design. That means we think hard about materials before we think about systems, and we believe that the envelope of a building, its skin, carries meaning beyond thermal performance.

Weismann's practice makes that argument visually. The rammed earth panels carry within them what the artist describes as forms of vernacular knowledge: techniques passed down through material practice rather than written instruction. In construction terms, this is the same knowledge that underpins earthen building traditions across the world, from Moroccan pisé to Yemeni tower houses to contemporary Passivhaus-certified rammed earth projects in Europe.

What the work adds is a layer of cultural and ecological reflection. The clay is not fired. It is unfired, raw, and in principle fully reversible. In an industry obsessed with embodied carbon, that is not a small thing.

Sodeisha: Crawling Through Mud (2026) by Adam Weismann, Claymoon Studio. Six unfired Cornwall clay panels forming a fractured circular trace. Each panel 50 x 50cm. Matiz Gallery, Barcelona.

Matiz Gallery and the BASPcr Context

The exhibition is framed within the curatorial concept of BASPcr (Barri de l'Art Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera), a project examining vernacular techniques and their relationship to place, memory, and collective inhabitation.

Ivonne Parra has assembled a body of work at Matiz that consistently brings material practice into conversation with cultural and ecological thinking. Weismann's series fits within that frame precisely because it refuses to separate the technical from the poetic.

The gallery also shows other works in clay by Weismann, including a six-panel terracotta piece with a pressed circular form that reads like a cross-section through geology, and an ombre triptych in lighter mineral tones that achieves something closer to pure atmosphere. Each piece is a different argument made through the same material.

Detail of unfired clay panels showing the compressed layering and mineral pigmentation achieved through the rammed earth process. Matiz Gallery, 2026.

A Note on Material Authenticity

One of the most valuable things about encountering work like this in a gallery setting is the directness of the encounter. You are not looking at a photograph of a material or a rendered CGI impression. You are standing in front of the actual surface, at actual scale, under actual light.

For architects, that kind of encounter is irreplaceable. It reminds you what a material can do when it is allowed to be itself: not covered, not sealed, not disguised.

We work with clients who are increasingly interested in natural materials and low-impact construction. That interest is usually driven by environmental values. But Weismann's work points to something else as well: these materials carry a presence that synthetic alternatives simply do not. They connect a building, or in this case a gallery wall, to the ground beneath it.

That is something you understand by being in the room with it, not by reading a specification.

CM0010 Ombre Series (2026) by Adam Weismann, Claymoon Studio. Unfired clay, sand and mineral pigment triptych. Tonal shift from light to shadow, linked to a penumbral lunar eclipse. 1,230 x 630 x 65mm (x3). Matiz Gallery, Barcelona.

Visit Matiz Gallery

Matiz Gallery, Barcelona Director: Ivonne Parra

Green Rammed Earth Skyspace and further works by Adam Weismann of Claymoon Studio are available through the gallery. 

Working with natural materials?

At RISE, material thinking sits at the heart of every project. If you are exploring rammed earth, unfired clay, or other natural materials for a home or building, we are happy to talk through what is possible.

→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
→ Or call the studio on 020 3947 5886

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Sean Ronnie Hill set up RISE Design Studio to make buildings that belong - to their place, their climate, and the lives of the people inside them. The practice works across residential architecture, interiors, and the transformation of existing buildings, with a particular affinity for the layers of history a good building carries. Designing well, at RISE, means designing something that lasts - and feels right from the first day you move in.