A rammed earth pavilion built by our own crews
The UAE Pavilion at Expo 2023 Doha was completed as an entire pavilion in in-situ rammed earth — every wall rammed on site, in lifts, between formwork, by artisans on our own payroll. The project received the Gold Award for Best Self-Built Pavilion, and it stands as working proof that a rammed earth pavilion can be delivered at civic scale in the Gulf.
The self-built part matters. Rammed earth is unforgiving of gaps between designer, supplier and installer: the soil blend, the formwork and the ramming all need to be controlled by the same hands. Because the crews who rammed the pavilion are our own employees rather than subcontractors, one team carried each wall from mix design to struck formwork. You can see the finished building on the project page, alongside the rest of our completed projects.
Earth Layers is the Dubai arm of Conmarble Natural Finishes, with sister companies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. That regional structure is how a Dubai-based natural finishes contractor comes to have rammed earth crews with a completed expo pavilion in Doha behind them.
Rammed in lifts, tested to a standard
The pavilion walls went up the way all of our in-situ rammed earth does: soil placed in shallow lifts between rigid formwork and compacted layer by layer until each lift is dense and tight. When the forms are struck, the tamped lifts read as strata. Each band records the day it was made — the moisture of the mix, the pressure of the rammer, the colour of the soil. The banding people respond to is the construction method made visible, not a decorative effect applied afterwards.
Behind the appearance sits acceptance testing. Our rammed earth is tested to 8 MPa, referencing New Zealand's earth building standards (NZS), a codified framework for engineered earth construction. If you are weighing load-bearing earth walls for a project, our structural guide to rammed earth sets out how specification and testing work in practice.
What the project proves about rammed earth in the Gulf
Expo pavilions are civic buildings on demanding programmes: public-facing, heavily trafficked and tied to a fixed opening date. Completing one entirely in rammed earth shows the material can meet that brief in the Gulf — not as a feature wall or a cladding gesture, but as the building itself.
It also shows the method repeats. The same approach is at work at Al Kaaban Resort in Qatar, where guest buildings, a mosque and its minaret, and the boundary walls were all rammed in lifts on site. A pavilion proves the concept; a resort proves it can be done again, building after building.
For clients in the Emirates the relevance is direct. Earth construction is drawing serious attention in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and natural materials of this kind contribute to WELL, LEED and Mostadam scorecards. The pavilion gives specifiers something firmer than a rendering to point to: a finished civic building, in the regional climate, delivered by a contractor they can call.
The strata look without the structural wall
Not every project needs, or can accommodate, a structural earth wall. For interiors, Clayworks makes a Rammed Earth Finish: a clay plaster applied at 7 to 10 mm that recreates the strata banding on interior walls and ceilings. As Clayworks' sole authorised distributor and approved applicator across the Middle East, we supply and install it with the same in-house teams. Like all clay plasters, it helps hold a room between 40 and 60 per cent relative humidity, with nothing to off-gas.
The two products solve different problems, and confusing them causes real specification errors. We have set out the differences — thickness, structure and where each belongs — in rammed earth vs rammed earth plaster.
Speak to the team that built the pavilion
The UAE Pavilion at Expo 2023 Doha was not a one-off experiment; it is how we build. If you are considering rammed earth for a pavilion, a cultural building, a resort or a private villa in the UAE, the crews who rammed those walls are the ones who would price and build yours. We can also arrange a visit to our Riyadh showroom by appointment, where an in-situ rammed earth wall is on display.
Send your drawings or finishes schedule through our enquiry page, or message us on WhatsApp at +971 58 822 3975, and we will come back with buildability comments, indicative budgets and samples. Wellness, in Every Surface.