picnic table and bench intersect i/thee's eroded rammed earth walls in iowa park

i/thee completes the dining room

The Dining Room is an experimental earthen pavilion that harnesses the forces of nature to create a public dining space at Lake Petocka in Bondurant. Conceived by design collaborative i/thee, the picnic area features two rammed earth walls intentionally eroded to reveal playful public infrastructures that intersect and protrude from the volumes — giving the impression natural forces have slowly excavated them over centuries.

Along the process, advanced digital tools like 3D scanning were combined with traditional techniques, such as timber scribing, to graft exaggerated tables and benches onto the tactile walls. As one of the first projects of its kind in Iowa, the installation showcases the benefits, versatility, and feasibility of rammed earth construction in a humid continental climate and provides a model for subsequent buildings.

all images courtesy of i/thee

experimental rammed earth construction for public benches

The Dining Room marks the beginning of a broader master plan designed by i/thee for the city of Bondurant, envisioning a network of public ‘rooms’ along a trail encircling Lake Petocka. Building off the hometown feel of the city, each installation plays upon communal spaces typically found in a house and scales it to the size of the community park. Each will engage with the environment in novel ways, allowing the surroundings to shape them in turn.

As the inaugural piece, The Dining Room serves as the heart of this series of installations, with the others set to be constructed over the coming years. i/thee’s construction process began with the erection of two unreinforced rammed earth walls composed of a locally sourced mixture of sand, clay, and gravel. These materials were mixed on-site and compacted layer by layer into formwork, resulting in two monolithic, self-supporting elements. Once complete, the design team used a high-pressure water sprayer to strategically erode the walls, imitating natural processes to create complex geo-mimetic morphologies that appear to have been shaped by wind and water. Further, the installation is not static as strategic erosion breaks were set into the walls to allow them to evolve over time, inviting the environment — and time itself — to become co-creators in the design process.

a 30-foot picnic table intersects the sculpted earth wall