Architecture students and Construction Management students at 麻豆传媒集团 traded their textbooks for trowels in a hands-on studio that brought four full-scale wall assemblies to life inside Woodbury’s architecture complex. Led by the Regenerative Rebuild Collective (RRC), a group of architects and builders advancing earthen and natural construction practices, the project challenged students to learn not through computer screens, but through direct contact with the materials reshaping the future of architecture.
Working alongside expert builders, students designed and constructed four distinct wall assemblies at 1-to-1 scale: light straw-clay, straw bale, adobe, and compressed earth block (CEB).
Because each system was built full-size, students could engage with the actual weight, texture, and behavior of materials they had previously encountered only in drawings and models.
The mock-ups were rooted in a simple palette of clay, sand, straw, and lime 鈥� materials drawn directly from the earth that require little to no processing. With the exception of metal hardware and concrete foundations required by California’s seismic codes, the assemblies are largely free of industrial inputs. Only two of the four systems incorporate wood framing, and the straw-bale wall contains just one petrochemical-based component 鈥� two thin layers of building paper.
At the end of a building’s life, walls like these don’t head to a landfill. They can be returned to the soil or broken down and reused to build something new.
For the RRC, language matters. The collective draws a careful distinction between sustainable and regenerative design. Sustainable systems are designed to maintain balance and endure without collapses. Regenerative systems go further 鈥� they actively improve the environments and communities they’re part of. When used thoughtfully, regenerative materials don’t just reduce harm; they leave the larger system measurably better than before. At a minimum, they do no harm.
That shift in framing changes what a building can be. Rather than treating architecture as something that takes from the earth while minimizing damage, regenerative design asks how a structure might actively contribute to soil health, local economies, and the well-being of the people who live and work inside it.
The wall mock-ups remain in the architecture complex as both teaching tools and provocations鈥� physical reminders that the materials of a more responsible architecture are already here, already proven, and already in use. As Woodbury continues to invest in regenerative and earth-based design education, the RRC studio offers an early model of what that future looks like in practice.
The Regenerative Rebuild Collective studio was led by Lara Hoad of Lara Hoad Architecture Design, WORKSHOP Girardi Kabala founders Melina Girardi and Matthew Kabala, Jordana Maisie, with contributions from collaborators across the RRC.