Heal, Home, Hmmm

Working with artist Roo Dhissou, who was commissioned by the V&A for the London Design Festival 2025, Intervention Architecture were approached to collaborate closely on the design concept, detail development, material procurement and manufacture of a contemporary Punjabi mud house, connecting to the artist's childhood and traditional build techniques.

Following iterative design and making research of traditional mud house building techniques, this was combined with our knowledge of CNC fabrication and dry joined sheet materials, to create a flat-pack mud pavilion, integrating cob panels within a plywood frame. This enables the house to be easily de-constructed and re-constructed in multiple venues, as it will be on tour at multiple galleries around the UK.

With structural input from Webb Yates Engineers, we were able to design bespoke methods of fixings and supports for the clay, so that the pavilion is self-supportive and free-standing within the V&A Museum, the worlds largest museum of applied arts, arts & design.

The layout of the pavilion includes a ramp for accessibility, a shoe storage area as visitors are invited to enter, into a vestibule with arched openings, and two main areas of form, to represent a sleeping zone, and living area with a single light pendant drop into this space.

Roo also made traditional woven stools for contemplative seating, a clay oven form to the exterior, and a sound installation to experience.

During the design process, we procured the reuse of waste clay dug from HS2 construction sites in the UK, through working with a key partner to the process Rescued Clay, providing all of the processed clay used for the cob panels, and supporting the making processes of the panels in their workshop.

The themes explored in this work include, how access, care, and environmental responsibility can shape the structures we build, both physically and socially.

Following night builds, the team was assisted by many volunteers and the curation support, in the self-build construction at the museum.

The project was featured on Dezeen here.