For years we’ve been following the work of Ronald Rael, a designer and architect who frequently works with large-scale 3D printing technologies (he is also a founder member of Emerging Objects). His latest project, part of the 2025 Desert X exhibition in Coachella Valley, is a distillation of many of the themes he is interested in, including indigenous building practices, sustainability, organic materials, and contemporary technologies. The project, called Adobe Oasis, consists of an installation of mud passageways made using robotic 3D printing and inspired by the palms of Coachella Valley’s oases.
The Coachella Valley, best known for hosting the eponymous music festival, is also home to the Thousand Palms Oasis, a fertile area in the desert where palms thrive thanks to underground water sources that are pushed to the surface by the San Andreas fault line. The unique, almost feathery texture of the palms was one of the inspirations for Rael in his Adobe Oasis project. Another key inspiration for the interactive installation was traditional earthen building practices, developed by indigenous peoples for over 10,000 years.
“Against the backdrop of architectural relics from western expansion and 20th-century real estate development, Adobe Oasis stands as a powerful alternative, highlighting the potential of earthen materials amid the climate crisis,” states Desert X, the international art exhibition that the 3D printed piece is part of.
Manufacturing on Demand
The architectural walls are characterized by a corrugated texture created by the robotic arm’s toolpath. The sturdy walls, which rise moderately above people’s heads, form angles and passageways in the way they are laid out. This layout also plays with the light of the Coachella Valley desert and frames a single tall palm tree. In terms of the material, Rael worked with adobe, a traditional building material made from earth, water and organic binder, which brings with it multiple benefits compared to other building materials, including that it is sustainable, fire resistant, non-toxic and low cost.
“Adobe Oasis invites visitors into a dynamic landscape, where passageways frame views of the land and sky, fostering solitude and connection—reflecting the cyclical flow of geologic time,” the project description reads. “For Rael, this land-based project serves as both an artistic endeavor and a research initiative, with each of his 3D printed adobe structures building on the last, advancing his vision for sustainable housing alternatives.”
Overall, Adobe Oasis bridges traditional building practices with modern technologies, demonstrating a way forward for building that takes lessons from the past. The installation can be experienced in person at Desert X in the Coachella Valley until May 11th, 2025. Some of Ronald Rael’s other projects include Mud Frontiers, a series of four 3D printed mud huts inspired by the historical Rio Grande river, and the 3D Printed Cabin of Curiosities, which explores 3D printing as a solution for producing cladding.
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3D printed Starbucks being built in Texas: The first hints of this construction 3D printing project cropped up in December 2024, when a local social media account in Brownsville shared some footage and images of the construction site being set up. As Brownsville Today wrote in a caption: “The first 3D printed store building in the valley is being made here in Brownsville! Starbucks on Boca Chica! Spoke to a couple of workers and they said ‘you might be drinking coffee by February.”
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Author: Tess Boissonneault
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