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My Experiments with Ferrocement Technology

By Anupama Kundoo - 1 April 2026

Over the last three and a half decades, against the backdrop of prevalent post-industrial building cultures that rely on extractive production methods based on large supply chains and capital drivers, I have undertaken rigorous experiments on several easily available materials that can be combined in radically new ways to reduce our environmental impact while increasing human engagement in the production of sensitive and intelligent alternatives for the built environment. Investigating natural materials like round wood and stone, earth and fired earth, I have sought to develop human-centric design, putting our human intelligence to the service of producing homes that not only meet occupants’ direct requirements or personal demands but are also in the general interest of society to safeguard the environment. At a time when building construction is excessively standardized and progressively outsourced to machines, the “thinking hand” taking a backseat, my experiments with ferrocement technology continue to open new doors to further new ideas for its application. My experiments point to the relevance of this exciting esthetic, multifunctional material as a potential future alternative, radically reducing the consumption of high-energy manufactured products.

What is Ferrocement

Ferrocement is a low-embodied-energy variant of reinforced concrete. It consists of simple chicken-wire mesh sometimes augmented by a 6-mm steel rebar frame encased in cement plaster. Unlike concrete, ferrocement does not contain coarse aggregate. No more than
25 mm thick, it is comparable to a typical layer of cement plaster used in construction. Compared to typical Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC), ferrocement has superior strength-to-weight properties, uses less cement and steel, and reduces embodied energy to yield direct economic and environmental benefits. Steel reinforcement bars are replaced by a steel mesh; a 25-mm thick wall replaces one of 125 mm;¹ and the need for aggregates is eliminated. Versatile and long-lasting, ferrocement offers better seismic force resistance – it bends, whereas reinforced concrete would crack – and is easy to make and maintain.

It can be cast in-situ, or produced offsite, where curing and other processes are easier to control. Produced in masons’ backyards, it offers a secondary source of income – and hence a more equitable wealth distribution – with minimal capital outlay, making it a particularly suitable social sustainability measure for developing countries.

Ferrocement’s Properties and Form Development

Ferrocement’s thin cross-section – an essential characteristic – makes it unstable unless it is folded or bent. As a result, ferrocement is at its most suitable if used to produce curved or undulating shapes, a highly prized architectural property.

In the words Stanley Abercrombie used in his Ferrocement: Building with Cement, Sand, and Wire Mesh (1977): “Ferrocement’s thinness makes it structurally unstable without bending, but it is also its thinness, combined with the great pliability of its supporting wire mesh that makes such bending very easy”.² Form development thus plays a large part in the design and structural stability of ferrocement applications. Geometry and engineering know-how can deliver maximum built space with less material since shaping the product enhances material stiffness and reduces deflection, allowing the use of economical cross sections.

Ferrocement’s thinness – and resultant lightness – compared to reinforced concrete, means less consumption of materials like sand, cement and wire mesh, resulting in lower overall attendant costs. Again, having a lower mass and higher reinforcement capacity than RCC, ferrocement is self-supporting even at the beginning of the curing period, which does away with the need for formwork. Modules can therefore be prefabricated for mass-production. Low-cost, low-tech processes provide a low-maintenance, long-life, water-resistant end-product. Provided it is properly shaped, ferrocement can be molded to almost any form. Versatile and easily repaired, it can be employed in many parts of the world. In addition, being highly ductile, it withstands quite severe seismic forces, a relevant threat in the context of emerging concerns due to climate change.

Ferrocement technology is both environmentally and economically promising, consuming significantly lower amounts of high embodied-energy components.

Background

Ferrocement was primarily used in boat-building until the early 1940’s, when Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi demonstrated its suitability for roofing structures with his designs for the Italian Naval Academy swimming pool and the Turin Exhibition Hall. In 1977, Abercrombie wrote: “Compared to other building techniques, ferrocement has remained a puzzling freak. Its design criteria are based mostly on experience, not on scientific experiment, and without accepted data to explain its unusual properties, those properties have gone regrettably underutilized”.³

My encounter with the material began in 1990 in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India, where, in 1971, its chief architect Roger Anger produced double-curved roof surfaces in ferrocement just 25 mm thick, whose very form gave the material its strength and stability. The skills and knowledge gained during this first design and construction led to a series of further buildings with sculptural forms and playful details: not only in Anger’s subsequent buildings but also to its broader use in Auroville.⁴

Auroville’s Center for Scientific Research, founded in 1984, developed prefabricated elements: doors, roofing channels, biogas plants, and ready-to-install toilet units, utilizing ferrocement as the primary material. A versatile material, ferrocement was found to be appropriate for the earliest settlements planned by Anger for Auroville at Auromodèle. Houses were conceived as free, flexible, open-plan living spaces, with only the kitchen and bathroom being separate spaces. Ferrocement was also chosen by Anger as the appropriate material for the outer skin of the Matrimandir in Auroville, where he used prefabricated elements with openings for the ingress of light.

My Ongoing Experiments

Realizing ferrocement’s many benefits for architecture – lightness, affordability, plasticity, and universality – I began experimenting on my very first project, the Residence of Pierre Tran in 1991, using it to achieve a lightweight façade of vertical fins that regulate light and allow for natural ventilation. Impressed by its versatility, I then used ferrocement to produce affordable built-in interior elements, such as the custom-made kitchen platform in the residence of Hemant and Divya in 1998. About 15 years later, I developed a set of three architectural prototypes based entirely on ferrocement technology, namely the Light Housing Prototype (2013), Full Fill Homes (2015), and Easy WC (2016). I have developed many other ferrocement elements, such as the perforated south façade screens of the Wall House (2000), the bay windows at Dreamtime House (1998), and a range of furniture elements designed over the years. I continue to experiment with ferrocement, discovering new areas of application in architecture, furniture design, landscape design, and structural systems.

The Light Housing Prototype, Auroville (2013)

Plasticity, a basic characteristic of both reinforced concrete as well as ferrocement as building materials, has attracted the creativity and imagination of architects and led to a multitude of creative expressions. However, the structural behavior of ferrocement differs from reinforced concrete regarding its plasticity as well, wherein unlike reinforced cement, ferrocement needs to be bent or folded if it is to guarantee structural stability. I explored these ideas with the Light Housing Prototype in Auroville in 2013. Using a form derived from origami – the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding that transforms flat sheets of paper into three-dimensional forms through multiple folding – combined with hybrid construction technologies, we achieved a balance between low- and hi-tech. Folded geometric forms enabled the creation of span large roofs in ferrocement.

A range of bent and folded geometries was first tested with origami to stiffen thin sheets of paper, which led to exploring ways of building synthetic elements that integrated roof and walls creating curved shell forms that could become facetted surfaces. The method can be easily explained geometrically. The result is simplified building processes, including the formwork, and therefore minimum wastage. This led to the development of a form whose proportions were appropriate for a modest home. The module was designed to be versatile, replicable, and used in combinations and so serve a range of applications and household needs. Its applicability covers a range of contexts requiring speed and versatility, such as disaster relief, slum-upgrading, temporary housing in sensitive landscapes, youth hostels, and more. While foundations and floor designs vary depending on site-specific conditions, in all cases the ferrocement-based structures placed on top of them are more lightweight. The key strategy to reduce production cost, time and material consumption is to first define the house using this lightweight roofing element, therefore minimizing the need for columns, beams and walls. The chicken-wire mesh embed in the ferrocement also serves to make the unit resistant to seismic loads.⁵

After the initial origami experiments, full-scale prototypes were produced in re-used corrugated cartons. The selected object was then translated into ferrocement and produced using a range of alternative prefabrication techniques for the steel mesh elements. The completed prototype was left with a residential community – Citadines, in Auroville’s city center – where local children now use it as a collective space. The full-scale structure is habitable as an enclosed space that will go well beyond fulfilling its role of demonstrating a new approach to lightweight building.

Full Fill Homes, First Tested Out in Chennai (2015)

Conventional reinforced concrete is poured into forms where curing takes place. Required to bear the considerable weight of the poured material, the formwork entails elaborate, carefully engineered and built structures, which, however, are used only temporarily during this construction phase. Ferrocement, in contrast, has a much lighter mass, and its dense reinforcement often makes it self-supporting even at the beginning of the curing period, eliminating the need for the construction of formwork. This is an inherent advantage in terms of time and material efficiency, facilitating the development of a module that can be industrially prefabricated.

I explored ideas experimenting with the application of ferrocement in the affordable, rapid-build Full Fill Homes, a low environmental-impact housing-unit prototype promoting self-building knowledge and community empowerment. A single unit can be assembled on site in seven days including the foundations, thanks to the structural ingenuity of this lightweight prefabricated material. The unit consists of a range of windows, doors, roof elements and other necessary building components, all produced in ferrocement. The resulting structures are versatile, allowing more domesticity and permanence than the Light Housing prototype. They can also be put to immediate use as shelters, houses in remote areas, disaster relief homes, youth hostels, student housing, and guest houses in environmentally sensitive locations. The houses can be dismantled equally simply in a day and reassembled elsewhere. Transportation and electric energy are minimal; cow-carts suffice where these are available.

Similar to the Light Housing prototype, the 25-mm thick ferrocement elements rely on small quantities of easily available materials. The Full Fill homes unit proposes an alternative method of construction where chicken mesh replaces steel bars, and mortar replaces concrete, reducing energy consumption during both manufacturing and transport. In this instance, the use of ferrocement does away with the need for industrial finishing materials. Fabrication and curing are water-efficient, and, as already mentioned, the material’s superior ductile properties resist seismic events, a growing concern due to climate change.⁶

While a structural necessity to strengthen very thin elements, folded box-shaped forms also create ergonomically designed spaces serving as household storage solutions for clothes, books, personal belongings, and kitchen utensils, including the kitchen sink, making furniture redundant and rooms spacious. Furniture costs are therefore saved. In addition, as I have always observed that small environments are often burdened by the space that furniture occupies in them, these units optimize the usable surface area by putting the thickness of the container walls to their full capacity, to be filled by the residents. The voids in the walls rather than the walls themselves are made to stand out thanks to the bright, joyful colors given to the surfaces by adding colored oxides embedded in the cement slurry. The homes are therefore built in keeping with the esthetic values of the local context, eliminating the need for finishing materials. The cement surfaces are simply given a low-maintenance waterproof wax polish.

Production in the backyards of masons’ houses rather than in factories cuts overheads, promotes local empowerment as a socially sustainable strategy, and brings housing back to the people. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, it provides local builders with a secondary source of income, triggering a more equitable wealth distribution.

Easy WC, First Tested in Auroville (2016)

Enhancing domestic facilities was further investigated with the Easy WC. Its easily and rapidly assembled modular components make building an affordable toilet a real possibility. The Easy WC follows the same swift, affordability as the home-build system, providing clear advantages for developing countries in general and particularly suited to the context of India.

The Easy WC consists of toilet and shower cubicles on either side of a covered platform where a washbasin is installed. Comprising six prefabricated ferrocement elements that can be assembled on site in a day – at most, two, depending on the ground conditions – it can be adapted to the type of toilet desired by the users: connected to a freestanding septic tank, a sewerage drainage network, or dry toilet pit, depending on the local context.

¹ Anupama Kundoo, Wege zur Architektur: Wissen Bauen, Gemeinschaft Bauen (FSB Franz Schneider Brakel, 2017)
² Stanley Abercrombie, Ferrocement: Building with Cement, Sand, and Wire Mesh (Schocken Books, 1977)
³ Ibid
⁴ Anupama Kundoo, Roger Anger: Research on Beauty: Architecture 1953-2008 (JOVIS Verlag, 2009)
⁵ Mette Marie Kallehauge, Lærke Rydal Jørgensen, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Anupama Kundoo: The Architect’s Studio (Lars Müller Publishers, 2020)
⁶ A. Kundoo, Wege zur Architektur