Architects: Showcase your next project through Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletter. 

Click here to get more.

Originating as a tool for civil engineering, the gabion wall dates back to the late s. It slowly made its transition to architecture because of its superior strength and permeability. The gabion wall consists of a metal mesh cage filled with loose material, usually stones, sand or soil. The wall is crack resistant and contours to the grade of the site. The material used to fill the cages determines how porous the wall is, a feature often used to create a natural cooling effect.

Architects prize the gabion wall, traditionally used as a landscape material, for its bold, textured look. Unlike the orderly rock wall, gabion walls provide a feeling of accidentality to a building, allowing the eye to explore the irregular shapes and patterns. They are often used as exterior walls to provide a rugged, outdoor aesthetic, but are also exposed in the interior, merging the two both materially and environmentally.

The following collection of projects showcase this rugged construction technique at its contemporary best. Take a leap and discover life beyond brick, concrete or plastered walls:

Fire Station Fleres by Roland Baldi architects, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

The design of this striking fire station addresses the natural phenomena of mud slides that happens on the mountain annually. The façade of the building consists of dolomitic rock collected from the construction site and put into the gabion walls that face the front.

Buddhist Retreat by Imbue Design, Grover, Utah, United States

Intertwining the acts of living and spiritual ritual, this Buddhist Retreat incorporates volcanic rock, found on the site, into the gabion wall under the meditation room. The rock acts to dissipate much of the heat received by the house in the summer.

Forest House in Izabelin Near Warsaw by Barycz & Saramowicz Design Office, Warsaw, Poland

This luxurious residence in Warsaw asserts its presence in the landscape with soaring gabion walls, posing a technical challenge for the architect. But with planning and precision, the walls were laid out meticulously to form a fortress-like exterior wall, referencing the military origins of gabion walls.

Observation House by I/O architects, Bulgaria

A remarkable building by I/O architects, the Observation House extends the reach of the gabion wall in architecture by using it as both a landscape and architectural element. The wall simultaneously acts as the exterior wall for the downstairs, and as the ground for a small lawn on the second floor.

Relux Ios Island by A31 ARCHITECTURE, Ios, Greece

The recent renovation of Relux Ios Island incorporates stone gabion elements throughout the resort complex. One of the major goals of the project was to blend the surrounding landscape with the hotel, and gabion walls allowed for a clean, modern approach to this.

Casa Linder by Buchanan Architecture, Dallas, Texas, United States

Casa Linder emphasizes reclaimed materials and the old homesteads of the first Dallas residents. The house employs a gabion wall along the front elevation for added texture and privacy for the pool behind it.

University of Pretoria Plant Science Complex by kwpCREATE Architects, South Africa

This Plant Science Complex at the University of Pretoria whimsically employs an embedded gabion wall with planters on the exterior of the building. The architects skillfully brought the effect of natural landscape into the architectural elements of the building.

Rock Office by a21 studio, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This winding office employs the gabion wall due to budget and lease-term constraints. The primary construction material needed to be inexpensive, locally sourced and easy to disassemble after 5 to 10 years of use.

Eggum Tourist Route by Snøhetta, Eggum, Norway

Gabion walls slope around this Norwegian tourist route stop, highlighting the landscape and creating an amphitheater for weary travelers. The gabion walls are not meant to stand out, but rather act to demarcate different programming throughout the stop.

Hanil Cement Information Center and Guesthouse by BCHO Architects Associates, Maepo-eup, Danyang-gun, South Korea

This project was designed to educate people about recycled concrete. Concrete is the primary building material of Korea and the building showcases how to reuse this material in casting formwork and recasting. A gabion wall makes up one part of the building, and excess concrete was recycled in the cages.

Dame of Melba by Seeley Architects PL, Anglesea, Australia

A holiday residence for a retired couple in Australia, this house overlooks the Anglesea coastline. The design centered around materials that weather well and require minimal maintenance. Large, granite-filled gabion walls retain the hillside and make up the boundary of the carport.

House 9×9 by Titus Bernhard Architekten, Stadtbergen, Germany

House 9×9 is located in a suburban community of Augsburg. It was designed as an inhabitable sculpture for a couple and a statement against banal local design statutes. A gabion façade was suspended from the insulated and sealed shell as a non-load-bearing structure.

Basecamp by Johnston Architects pllc, Ronald, Wash.

Basecamp was guided by the idea of pausing before ascending a mountain. Here, people can recharge before milestones in life and reconnect with nature between activities. Gabion walls serve to blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor space.

Orphanage by F8 Architecture, Bamako, Mali

This orphanage in Mali is a shelter for 30 children of all ages. The program includes housing for children and staff, a small medical center, admin offices, kitchen, and dining hall. More utilitarian functions are located on the ground level while classrooms and terraces are located above. Gabion cladding is used on the most exposed façades of the building.

Haoshun Wire Mesh Manufacturing contains other products and information you need, so please check it out.

Raasay Hall by Dualchas Architects, Glasgow, United Kingdom

The design of the Raasay village hall replaces a former house that was used for concerts, talks, or gatherings. The building is fully accessible and includes many programs, including indoor football, a gymnasium, a full-sized badminton court, as well as concerts, discos, and the film club. A timber rain-screen roof combines with stone from the site that was incorporated into the gabion.

House in the Landscape by kropka studio, Zawiercie, Poland

Two volumes connected by openwork wooden links, this house was constructed in the buffer zone of the Eagles&#; Nests natural landscape park. The powerful context includes agricultural fields, old stone churches, and castle ruins. The main part of the building is finished with gabion baskets filled with local limestone, thus helping to create a design that blends the house into the landscape.

Maleny House by Bark Design Architects, Sunshine Coast, Australia

Maleny House was created as a glass mountain house, one that celebrates the unique landscape and rim condition it is perched upon. Anchored and robust, the house was also designed to be transparent, light, and floating. A stone mason helped create a unique gabion stone wall as a landscape art element along the edge of the house.

Architects: Showcase your next project through Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletter.

Introduction and first 9 project descriptions by Alden Rose; 8 following project descriptions by Eric Baldwin.

Gabion

Gabion n., &#; a wire fabric container, uniformly partitioned, of variable size, interconnected with other similar containers and filled with stone at the site of use, to form flexible, permeable, monolithic structures such as retaining walls, sea walls, channel linings, revetements, weirs, etc. for erosion and flood control.

Gabion, are &#;caged rocks&#;, and they capture the feel of non-linearity, and essential characteristic of beauty in nature. It is the non-repetitive forms of the stone &#; a collection &#; a collection of individual fragments from the same geological time tied together by wire. Even the wire has a pattern that the rocks interfere with, leaving it structured yet random &#; no two cages remain visually the same.

Soil erosion is an ever present problem and gabions have proved to be a lasting civil engineering solution around the world.

The earliest known use of gabion-type structures was for bank protection along the Nile River about 7,000 years ago.

The gabion system has evolved from baskets of woven reeds to engineered containers manufactured from wire mesh. The lasting appeal of gabions lies in their inherent flexibility. Gabion structures yield to earth movement but maintain full efficiency and remain structurally sound. They are quite unlike rigid or semi-rigid structures which may suffer catastrophic failure when even slight changes occur in their foundations. They are a product of designing with nature.

Gabion construction has been used for many decades as free-draining retaining walls.

The wire baskets interlock, and the mass of the stone fill gives them some frictional strength. Gabion walls are traditionally battered &#; usually stepped using narrower baskets as the wall gets higher and higher.

The wire baskets can be made of many materials, although traditionally they are of galvanized or coated steel. There is little to inhibit the use of other materials such as bamboo slats or synthetic materials for the cage construction.

When gabion walls become very thick, it is sensible to consider a cellular form of construction.

One crucially important characteristic of any traditional gabion wall is its settlement. The stone fill will settle, and this implies a particular approach if the gabion wall is to be &#;tied&#; into the surrounding building fabric.

Relevant codes of practice include: BS &#; stones, hardness and weather resistance A974-97*&#; Standard Specification for Welded Wire Fabric Gabions and Gabion Mattresses *(ASTM)

TERRASSON CULTURAL GREENHOUSE

Until , when Ian Ritchie proposed using them as freestanding cantilevered walls for the Terrasson Cultural Greenhouse, their use had been associated with civil engineering projects for the retention of railway track ballast, and river banks.

The decision to use them was informed by the steeply sloping site, and the proposal to Kathryn Gustafson that they would be a sensible soil retention system for the new landscape. Since we were looking to harmonise the greenhouse with the landscape, it seemed appropriate to use gabion for the energy absorbing mass of the greenhouse walls, and to use evaporative cooling of the gabion surface in summer.

We investigated not only stone filled gabion baskets, but also earth and textile walls.

The use of indigenous, un-machined material drew upon investigations we had carried out in the late 80&#;s for a competition on the Isle of Aran in south west Scotland.

The quarry at St Yrieux was nearby Terrasson la-Villedieu on the Vésère river, and was the source material of the entire town centre&#;s construction The opportunity to create enclosure with minimum processing and transport was evident. The idea that the waste material from the quarry floor rather than quarrying new stone combined with an economic and basic technique associated with land stability and civil engineering could be the prime source of a new aesthetic in architecture was hugely appealing.

The potential beauty of gabion construction, both actual and latent, lies in its inevitable transformation over time by nature. Obviously gabion construction also lends itself to accelerated planting. The project was completed in early .

LONDON REGATTA CENTRE

In , we approached the question of scale and vandalism for the design of the London Regatta Centre on the north side of the Royal Albert Dock. Initial investigations into the fill material included using the existing rubble and concrete left on the site and the use of waste glass &#; there were waste glass mountains in Europe at the time, and the cost was very low /m3. This offered the possibility of a light-transmitting wall. However, our tests showed that light would not enter through the probable thickness of the walls, and this coupled with the potential hazard risk of broken glass edges, led to a stone fill.

Funding was made available in for the 1st phase of the project, the boat house, for which we designed a modified gabion construction, consisting of a galvanized lightweight steel frame and weldmesh infill panel. This enabled a vertical curved rhythm to be developed for these long walls, giving both gravitas and a strong architecture to what could have been a vulnerable lightweight building in a relatively empty landscape.

ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, TOWER BRIDGE

In , with Arup, Ian Ritchie Architects reinvestigated the way in which gabion could be fabricated and constructed with a view to improving and adapting their visual performance and the height of construction for the proposed Royal Opera House at Tower Bridge. The design exploited stainless steel for the baskets, horizontal retention cables, and river pebble fill.

The wall also addressed moisture penetration and acoustic issues.

If you want to learn more, please visit our website Gabion Manufacturer.