Gabion

A gabion is a welded or woven wire mesh cage or basket filled with loose stone, rubble or other coarse aggregate, used in construction chiefly for retaining walls, erosion control and, increasingly, decorative facade and landscape elements. The technique has roots in military fortification, where wire or wicker baskets filled with earth reinforced earthworks and trench walls, and its modern civil-engineering form developed through the twentieth century as galvanized welded wire mesh made large, durable, factory-fabricated stone-filled units practical for slope stabilization and highway retaining structures. Its permeability allows water to drain freely through the structure rather than building up hydrostatic pressure behind a solid wall, and its flexibility lets a gabion structure settle and shift somewhat with ground movement without cracking the way a rigid concrete or masonry retaining wall might.