Al Borde Builds an Adobe Microbe Lab in the Ecuadorian Amazon Without Formwork

What does a laboratory look like when its architects refuse to ship materials into the jungle? Al Borde answers with the Witoca Laboratory, a 46-square-metre research facility in San Vicente de Huaticocha, deep in Ecuador's Orellana Province. The building sits in the buffer zone of the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, a region caught between conservation mandates and the economic pressures of deforestation and monoculture. Rather than choosing either extreme, this project operationalizes a third path rooted in the Kichwa concept of the chakra, an ancestral agroecology model that treats high biodiversity and productive use as the same thing.

The result is startling. Three parabolic adobe vaults, built entirely without formwork using the Lak'a UTA structural system developed by Bolivian architect Raúl Sandoval, converge in a Y-shaped plan. One arm is an entrance, one handles reproduction, one manages incubation, and the center is a sterile laboratory for cultivating antagonistic microorganisms like Beauveria bassiana and Trichoderma, agents of biological pest control that could replace chemical inputs across Amazonian farms. The building is simultaneously a piece of radical material research (the bibliography on earth architecture in jungle climates is, as Al Borde notes, practically nonexistent) and a functioning biosecure facility. That combination makes it one of the most compelling small buildings completed this year.

Three Vaults in the Canopy

Seen from above, the Witoca Laboratory reads as a trefoil, three lobed vaults converging at a central skylight. The form is not decorative; each arm corresponds to a distinct biological function, and their convergence at the center allows material to move through the laboratory in a single direction, satisfying the sterilization and biosecurity protocols that govern every surface. The roofline barely clears the surrounding canopy, and the grey metal cladding absorbs into the overcast sky common to the region. It is a building designed to participate in its landscape rather than announce itself from a distance.

The clearing it occupies is minimal. Dense tropical vegetation crowds in from every side, and the radial plan means no single arm extends far enough to demand a large footprint. Drone views confirm the restraint: the structure is a punctuation mark in a paragraph of green.

Adobe in the Jungle

Adobe is almost never associated with tropical climates for good reason. Amazonian clay is notoriously difficult to stabilize, and persistent humidity threatens the structural integrity of unbaked earth. Al Borde tackled this head-on by enlisting structural engineer Patricio Cevallos, a member of Red PROTERRA, and master builder Miguel Ramos to develop soil mechanics protocols specifically for Amazonian conditions. Cement mortar was used in structural joints where the clayey soil proved unreliable, a pragmatic concession that kept the vast majority of the building in low-energy adobe while ensuring the vaults would stand.

The construction images are remarkable. Catenary brick arches rise under temporary fabric canopies, scaffolded in bamboo and timber while workers apply plaster to curved surfaces by hand. Adobe manufacturing requires minimal energy and burns no fossil fuels, a critical consideration for a site accessible only by rural roads. The Lak'a UTA system eliminated the need for heavy formwork, reducing material transport to a fraction of what a conventional concrete lab would demand.

Community-Built Precision

It would be easy to romanticize the participatory construction process, but the facts speak for themselves. Local farmers, with no prior experience in earth vaulting, were trained on-site by Cevallos and Ramos to construct specialized earthen vaults in a climate that has no technical literature to reference. The foundation layout, a concrete beam system radiating from a central point, was the one moment where conventional engineering took over. From there, the community built upward in brick and adobe, guided by protocols invented for this specific project.

Construction was carried out by AsoAmazonas in partnership with Al Borde's team. The distinction matters: this is not a starchitect parachuting into a rural community. The Witoca Laboratory emerged from a community-led productive initiative, and the architecture served that initiative rather than the other way around.

Inside the Biosecure Vault

Step inside and the building transforms. The ribbed vault ceiling reveals an intricate chevron pattern where adobe courses meet, casting subtle shadow lines that shift with the light filtering through the central skylight. Below, concrete counters, sinks, and tiered work surfaces support the controlled environment needed for microorganism cultivation. A figure in a white lab coat working beneath these vaults is a genuinely surprising image: the craft of ancient construction serving the precision demands of 21st-century biology.

The interior is fully sealed, a biosecure environment that prevents contamination of the cultures being developed inside. The thermal mass of the adobe walls dampens temperature swings throughout the day, maintaining stable conditions and reducing the energy load that mechanical climate control would otherwise bear. In a region where reliable electricity is not guaranteed, this passive strategy is not a design flourish but an operational necessity.

Light, Structure, and Atmosphere

The circular skylight at the convergence of the three vaults is the building's spatial climax. Looking up through the pyramidal shaft, light falls in a controlled cone that illuminates the central lab zone without exposing the peripheral incubation and reproduction arms to excessive solar gain. The geometry is efficient, but it is also beautiful in the most honest sense: a structural solution that happens to produce extraordinary interior light.

Where the ribbed vault panels meet at corners and junctions, the layered texture of the adobe courses creates a relief pattern that reads almost like woven fabric. These are not applied finishes. The ornament is a direct expression of the construction logic, each rib a structural course laid by trained hands without the mediation of formwork.

Facade and Threshold

The east-facing vault, which serves as the main entry, terminates in a timber arched door set into a flat end wall. It is the only moment where the building presents a recognizable facade, and Al Borde keeps it deliberately modest: vertical timber planks, a simple arched opening, and a grey metal roof that curves overhead. Viewed from the side, the barrel vault emerges from the jungle canopy like a geological formation rather than a built object.

The deliberate restraint of the exterior contrasts sharply with the spatial complexity inside. Approaching the building, you see a shed in the trees. Entering it, you find a precision instrument.

Prototyping and Model Studies

Physical models played a critical role in developing the vault geometry. Layered plywood ribs were stacked and curved to test structural behavior before full-scale construction, and bundled timber members secured with wire at the apex show the team working through joinery details at model scale. These artifacts reveal a design process grounded in material experimentation rather than digital optimization alone. Alongside the models, a greenhouse on site served double duty, drying adobe bricks on its floor while timber shelving held seedlings and supplies.

Plans and Drawings

The site plans confirm the tripartite logic: each vault arm radiates from a single center point, with the surrounding landscape rendered as circular tree canopies pressing close. Elevation drawings show the arched entrance portal flanked by the lower horizontal volumes, grounding the building in its clearing while the parabolic roof floats above. The sketch studies are particularly revealing, page after page of sectional explorations testing cable-stayed options, different arch profiles, and rib spacings before arriving at the final catenary form. They document a team thinking through unfamiliar territory with pen in hand.

Why This Project Matters

The Witoca Laboratory matters because it refuses the false choice between conservation and production. In a region where the standard options are urbanization, monoculture, or intangible protection zones that lock communities out of their own land, Al Borde's building creates a fourth path. It is a working scientific facility that cultivates biological pest control agents, built from the ground it sits on, by the people who will use it. The chakra model is not a metaphor here; it is the operational logic of both the program and the construction.

More broadly, the project challenges the assumption that earth architecture is limited to arid climates and simple enclosures. Building adobe vaults in the Amazon, without formwork, with no established technical literature, and achieving a biosecure interior environment is a genuine material innovation. When the construction techniques developed here enter wider circulation through Red PROTERRA and the broader earth-building community, the Witoca Laboratory will likely be cited as proof that low-energy construction can meet high-performance programmatic demands in the most unlikely of settings.

Witoca Laboratory by Al Borde, located in San Vicente de Huaticocha, Ecuador. 46 m². Completed in 2025. Photography by JAG Studio and Al Borde.

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