UK-based Invisible Studio has completed a rammed stone yoga studio for the Newt Hotel in Somerset, UK. Aside from its innovative use of rammed earth, the scheme is defined by a 36-foot-long rooflight made from a single insulated double-glazed unit.

The studio is lined entirely in beech slats to provide a "warm and immersive sanctuary-like space." The external skin uses the same rammed stone as the hotel’s adjacent gym, made from local limestone to give it a distinctive red color. Meanwhile, copper detailing borrows from the palette of materials established by the hotel’s Beezantium. 

“The rammed stone external skin is something we get asked about a good deal, particularly with no roof overhang,” Invisible Studio founder Piers Taylor explains. “The mix is colored only by using local ‘Hadspen’ limestone, which has a distinctive red hue, which is crushed from 45mm to dust. There is no sand added – just a small amount of binder which in this case is lime/GGBS/Cement.”

“The stone was all mixed on site, and poured bucket by bucket into the formwork,” Taylor added. “There are stainless steel tubes in the wall to ventilate a cavity behind, which is formed using Surecav. The external skin is tied back through the surecav to a ply sheathing fixed to an internal studwork wall. The roof membrane is dressed over the parapet at the top to protect it, but held back an inch or so from the edge to conceal it. The exposed portion is then protected by a shelter coat.”