In cob we trust

Responding to the theme of ecology, João Vasco Paiva’s Home 2.0 sculpture for this year’s Bold Tendencies commissions programme is a ruin made from cob bricks, right on top of Peckham’s multi-storey car park. The ambitious artwork was made possible by architect Benni Allan, who collaborated closely with João to develop the age-old building material into a viable structure.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2018 you’d spot them everywhere – the skeletal ruins of half-completed buildings abandoned by cash-strapped developers. After a few years of weathering – especially in warmer climates, these structures start to blend into the landscape much like the crumbling ruins of long-abandoned homesteads. Whether today or 1,000 years ago, it’s human nature to want to domesticate our environment and the nature of time to want to return our efforts to the earth.

It’s these ideas that Portuguese artist João Vasco Paiva wanted to explore in Home 2.0, which currently covers the roof of Peckham’s converted multi-storey car park as part of Bold Tendencies 2018 programme of artistic commissions. Resembling a one-storey house inspired by an abandoned home in southern Portugal, it’s part maze, part domestic dwelling, made from traditional cob bricks from organic matter like clay and straw. It’s a building material (and vernacular) common all over the world, from the UK to North Africa to Central America.

Given the unusual material, João brought on architect Benni Allan to collaborate on transforming the idea into a finished work. Deftly moving between designing architecture, sets and furniture, Benni set up his studio in 2016, after graduating from UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. In 2015 he was listed as one of the British Design Council’s Ones to Watch and in 2017 was shortlisted for RIBA’s Rising Stars Award. A constant explorer of materials and with a socially engaged, open-ended approach, Benni was instrumental in bringing Home 2.0 to life, both on budget and with an excruciatingly tight schedule.

Starting off by researching cob building techniques, Benni developed the plans into a viable structure, even reducing the number of bricks needed to form the same shape to keep down costs. ‘We made lots of changes as the structure was being built and had to have many discussions about how we would end up finishing the structure,’ explains Benni. ‘The interior has an almost monastic quality, and the walls feel as though they are rising from the ground – it’s both quite familiar and very different to everything else on the site.’  

Home 2.0 is joined by nine other commissions throughout the Peckham site including work by Johann Arens, Sian Lyn Hutchings, Irina Kirchuk, Lawrence Lek, Arjuna Neuman, Sterling Ruby, Emilija Škarnulytė, Jenna Sutela and Richard Wentworth. Each commission approaches the theme of ecology differently, from responses history of the Haitian Revolution to films shot in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

To keep up to date with the numerous exciting projects Benni will be launching in the next few months, follow him on Instagram here.