Retaining walls are an important infrastructure element in engineering. They take the form of gabion walls in many applications. One of many alternative construction systems, gabion walls securely connect two different ground elevations to block the damage caused by natural events (e.g. landslides). They are constructed by filling natural building materials like stone, sand, or soil into a steel or wicker cage or basket. People have incorporated them into defense fortification, engineering projects, and landscape architecture for centuries. Initially, they were used only to hold in soil. Today, you see in in many areas because they are durable, flexible, and easy to build –not to mention, they generally adapt well to wherever they’re set. Gabion walls have been as a design tool in architectural projects, interior design arrangements, and even urban furniture since at least the latter half of the 20th century.
The History of Gabion Walls
The English word Gabbion derives from the Italian “gabbione,” meaning “large cage/basket.” Gabbion walls have served many functions throughout history. The Ancient Egyptians began using them about 7.000 years ago. They built them to protect the banks of the Nile River and strengthen it against erosion, by filling giant cages with sand and soil, and then covering them with reed mats (Url-1). They also were used to stabilize coastlines and slopes. Over time, they became grew in popularity. By the Middle Ages, they changed form. They became cylindrical, and were filled almost exclusively with soil. They served as a kind of shield to protect cities from artillery during times of war. Leonardo Da Vinci was the first figure to treat them as a structural element. He had designed the foundation of Sforza Castle in Milan, atop large woven baskets (Url-2). The castle was built over remains of a 14th century fortification using a gabion-esque technique. Da Vinci referred to it as the “Corbeille Leonard” (Leonardo basket). The durability of the gabion masonry has allowed the castle to survive well into the present day. Better still, it has set an example for other works of architecture. Egidio Palvis of the Royal Society of Civil Engineers of Italy was the first to design a gabion wall proper. Architectural firm Maccaferri patented the gabion cage design. They also discovered sack gabion to as a method to protect riverbeds, a giant leap forward in the evolution of gabion applications (Url-3). It took construction workers some 34 days to build a gabion wall down the city of Bologna, Italy to protect it from being flooded by the Reno River. Started and finished in 1894, that wall is still guarding the city today.
Gabion Basket System and Its Features
To build a gabion wall, you must first create a steel carrier of sorts – ideally a basket or cage – out of wire mesh. Then, you fill that in with one or more building materials (namely rock fragments). Gabion baskets come in various sizes, namely as diaphragm and non-diaphragm boxes. Wire baskets are generally 1 m wide by 2 – 4 m long. They are brought to the construction site, and filled with the rock fragments, usually 100 – 250 m in diameter (Chikute and Sonar, 2019, 1161). The voids that emerge inside the baskets in turn create an upward shear force in contrast to the rigid walls, and strengthen the structure. Stainless steel wire mesh is double twisted; the holes between are hexagonal. Basket weaves are square, rectangular, or cylindrical. They are placed side by side and on top of one another and linked together by wire. Wire mesh coating is chosen according to three criteria: the environmental conditions of the construction site (e.g. humidity, aridness), air pollution, and what the wall is going to be used for. Galvanized baskets are used in places where the climate is arid. PVC coated galvanized baskets are used wherever there is a lot of humidity (Uray, 2014, 41). Hence, the more resistant the cage is to rust, corrosion, and aging, the better the wall’s strength capacity is. Gabion wall offer many advantages. They are durable, flexible, sustainable, affordable, and esthetic.
Durability: Gabion baskets are interconnected as a modular unit. This means that wire mesh proves extremely strong under tension. The mesh shell is more than just container for stone filling. It reinforces the whole structure. The double twisted steel coating creates high tensile strength, and makes baskets resistant to environmental elements. Making the connection the mesh with wire as opposed to welding it together likes increases makes the mesh better able to withstand dispersion under incoming loads. Stone blocks are durable and sturdy. Filling the spaces between them over time with vegetation and soil prevents hydrostatic pressure from forming, in turn fortifying the wall. Likewise, the wall is 30% hollow structure. It therefore does not need a barbican. The resulting permeability also eliminates the need for a drainage system.
Flexibility: Gabion baskets are flexible. They are more resistant to bending, tensility, and shear force than their reinforced concrete bearing counterparts. This, in turn, ensures that the wall — which gets subjected to varying tension and compression forces – deforms rather than crumbles. Deformation is a functional property, in that it projects the foundation against collapsing as well as against internal stress. The wall in turn suffers no damage because of different ground settlements. It also does not break, crack, or spill like reinforced concrete retaining walls do.
Sustainable and Environmentally Friendly: The rock fragments in the basket generally hail from local excavation projects close to the construction site. This means that gabion walls are therefore sustainable. Similarly, you can cover the gaps between the stones over time with vegetation. This means that gabion walls adapt well to their surroundings.
Cost efficient: Gabion walls are built exclusively from natural materials. Therefore, they require next to no maintenance whatsoever. Prefabricated wire baskets generally come in smaller volumes. In other words: they are cheaper to ship. Moreover, they are super quick and easy to set up. They require little in the way of professional expertise, which in turn saves the client on labour costs. It also costs nothing to either extract the rock [from nature] or to fill the wall.
Aesthetic: As has been mentioned above, gabion walls are built out of natural materials, and are green. The result: a wonderful sense of aesthetic. Gabion walls come in many guises. They can truly add that final touch to the landscaping, interior, or exterior of any buildingregardless of design. (which, if flexible, the potential to meld the two elements into a single whole). Today, the sky is the limit when it comes to what you can technically do with gabion walls in architecture. Better still, they have just as much decorative value as they do functional. Architectural firms like Herzog & de Meuron (H&dM) go so far as to play with them as an innovative building element in their projects. They have transformed them traditional retaining walls into a fashion icon of 20th century architecture.
Gabion Walls in Architectural Design
One of the most striking examples of gabion wall design in architecture is the Dominus Winery, located in California’s vineyard country. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron in 1998, its exterior walls were built out of basalt fragments extracted from a nearby lot. The rocks were placed in gabion baskets. They stabilize the conditions thrown at the building by the surrounding climate by protecting the winery from hot air flow during the day and cold airflow at night. According to H&dM: “Natural light trickles into the rooms during the day. Artificial light oozes out of the rock wall come nightfall. You could say that we used gabion walls as a kind of rock wickerwork that has varying degrees of transparency. They are more like skin than traditional walls.” The firm noted how permeable the façade was and how it made a difference to the winery during the day and at night (Url-4). H&dM questions and flips their understanding of gravity on its head by placing small rocks at the bottom and large rocks at the top. The firm explains that they used artist Robert Smithson’s 1968 exhibition “Non-site Series” as their point of reference when designing the winery. The exhibit featured local pieces of rocks placed in metal boxes. Smithson used the term “place” to describe the lot from which he gathered his materials. Likewise, he referred to their being in boxes as “out of place.” He wanted to show that the natural (i.e. rocks) is stuck in an artificial space, and there are gaps created between them. H&dM noted that they reflected this concept when designing the gabion baskets. That, in turn, strengthened the Dominus Winery’s physicality. In his book “Natural History,” Jacques Herzog explained that he wanted people to think of the gabion metal baskets as a frame, and the rubble stonewall as a landscape painting, thus directing their attention towards the winery’s surroundings (Herzog and Meuron, 2003, 51). In an interview with Julian Rose,, Herzog described the concept of the materials that comprise Dominus as: “We wanted to give materials more weight, to emphasize their specific and individual character. Look at the grayish-black basalt stones that are piled up in steel gabions to form the façade of the Dominus Winery. The gap between the stones is as relevant as the stones themselves. When the sun shines, the gaps become lively actors, suggestive of thousands of photographic apertures. (Url-5).” The winery’s structure is very much rustic. What’s more, its façade very much juxtaposes those of neighbouring buildings, and in fact the region’s architecture. Row upon row of rock-filled gabions form the building’s façade. Their cramps and voids allow light and air to enter the interior at different rates. Designed by Polidura Talhouk in 2005, Metroplotian Park South Access (Pucara, Chile) sits -as the name suggests- upon a metropolitan park where sports and cultural activities are organized, and complete with a café and viewing terrace. The designers used the stones extracted from the land upon which its sits on the façade of the building to create an architectural product that mirrors its surroundings (Url-6). They built 10 cm-thick translucent walls to capture the atmosphere that the stone creates on both the exterior and in the interior, and to establish a connection between the two. The entire surface of the building consists of 3 x 1 m and 3 x 0.5 m rectangular modules, complete with glasspaneled steel frames filled up with rocks (Figure 5). The use of stone as a building material strengthens Metropolitan Park’s relationship with the region of Pucara, where it is situated. Polidura Talhouk wanted to reflect the passage of time onto the building’s walls. They planned for moss and vines to gradually take over the outer vertical façade, in turn creating a sense of transition. Designed by Nevzat Sayın, “The Seed” Concert Hall was built in 2009 off the edge of Emirgan beach in Istanbul. Sayın wanted the hall to invisible so that it wouldn’t spoil the historical texture of the Bosphorus and its environs. The Seed is placed in such a way that its impact on the land – home to a historical mansion and trees under conservation – is minimal. The rocks from which the walls are made come from an excavation site. Sayın smashed and filled them into metal cages. His intention was to preserve the memory of a stonewall that used to sit on lot years before. The gabion wall doesn’t just sit there and look pretty. It dually hides technical equipment from the building behind it. Sayın exploited the gaps between the rocks in the gabions to arrange an interior ventilation system within the concert hall. He claims to have been inspired by the walls of H&dM ‘s Dominus Winery. He notes that he wanted walls that were as much functional as they were visually pleasing (URL 7). The Seed’s structure, façade, and interior were designed in a way that pays homage to the historical house, trees, and former stonewalls. At the same time, its nuances make it a truly breath taking concert hall. Gabion walls are now more than just a feature of exterior façades. You see them in interiors as well and they are as practical as they are aesthetic. Take Brazil’s own Fintech HQ Office in Sao Palo, for example. Built in 2019 by the architectural office Noak, Fintech wonderfully illustrates how you can use a gabion wall as an interior element (Url-9). Serve as landmark in the building’s interior plan, the walls are divided up into 540 m² office spaces. The wall’s hollow structure creates visual integrity between them, and ensures continuity of flow. Noak used the gabion basket weave to divide the square office plan into 4 central zones. They then grouped the offices, and obtained two main circulation axes. At the center of the dividing walls, the team designed recreation areas, including a coffee break lounge inside. Gabions are also frequently used in landscaping projects. You can find them designed into garden fences, retaining walls, seating areas, and even flower pots. Working as a visual and acoustic divider in outdoor spaces, gabion provides the transition between the building and the landscape with a smoother separation. Filled with local rocks, the wire cages strengthen the contextual status of the building, and help keep construction waste to a minimum. Today, gabion walls and the system with which they are built inspire applications and designs of all sorts in many an area. That said, you can even find gabions filled with recycled waste materials and used in landscaping, or even stuffed with walnut shells and molded into exterior and interior walls (Url-10, Url-11).
Bibliography
Chikute, G.C., Sonar, I.P., (2019), Techno-Economical Analysis of Gabion Retaining Wall Against Conventional Retaining Walls, International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, Vol: 06, Issue: 08, Ağustos 2019.
Dülgeroğlu, F. Y. (2014), Ekolojik Kaygı Temelli Yerleşimlerde Sürdürülebilirliğin Tüm Boyutlarıyla İncelenmesi: Ekoköyler, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Mimarlık Anabilim Dalı.
Herzog, J., Meuron, P. (2003). Natural History. İsviçre: Lars Müller Publishers.
Sayın, N. (2019). Düşünceler/İşler. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
Tan, Ö., Uray, E., (2015), Gabion Tipi Dayanma Yapıları, TMMOB İnşaat Mühendisleri Odası Dergisi, Sayı:485, ss:19-29, 2015/2, Ankara.
Toprak, B., Sevim, Ö., Kalkan İ., (2016), Gabion Walls And Their Use, International Journal Advance Mechanical Civil Engineering, Cilt:3, Sayı:4.
Uray, E., (2014), Gabion Tipi Dayanma Duvarlarında Tasarım Kriterlerinin Araştırılması, Selçuk Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, İnşaat Mühendisliği Anabilim Dalı.
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URL-11:https://www.archdaily.com/943256/where-to-apply-recycled-materialsin-architecture-and-urbanism-8-possible-applications?ad_source=search&ad_medium=search_result_all (E.T 11.10.2020)












