Tatiana Bilbao Estudio Builds Columns in Rammed Earth That Are Meant to Erode

On Saturday, October 24, at 2 PM, Art Omi will open "Borrowed Earth," a newly commissioned work by Tatiana Bilbao Estudio in its Sculpture & Architecture Park in Ghent, New York. The installation is built from rammed earth, a technique rarely used in the region, using locally sourced soil.

The form is elemental: a composition of columns that reads as both architectural object and landscape feature. "This architecture is meant not to last, but to belong: to land, to change, and to the cycles of nature itself," the studio states in its description of the work.

Bilbao's columns won't be preserved. As seasons shift and weather takes its toll, the rammed earth will slowly erode, blending back into the ground it came from. The designers frame this decay as the point, not a flaw. In their words, the columns "make the passage of time visible, revealing the fragile bond between humans and nature."

What does this change for visitors?

If you go, you won't see a finished monument. You'll see a work that embraces impermanence, participation, and what the studio calls "the quiet transformation that comes with age." Each visit offers a different surface, a different silhouette, as rain, frost, and wind redraw the columns over months and years.

The project also marks a technical departure for the region. Rammed earth construction—compacting layers of soil into formwork—is common in other parts of the world but, per the commission's organizers, rarely used here. Sourcing the soil locally ties the work literally to the site: the material and the ground beneath it are the same.

The opening celebration is free-form and public: join Art Omi on October 24 from 2 PM in the Sculpture & Architecture Park. After that, the piece's lifespan belongs to the weather.