Exploring the soil : Not a sentimental journey

A significant part of the challenge today is to change our perception of these spaces and give them meaning in/for the urban territory of the future. Whereas hardly ten years ago articles in the international press still had to point out the hidden added value of the ground beneath our feet – and even the fact that ground is not waste – this ground is nowadays subject to a rapid process of revaluation. The new soils such as the so-called technological soils or technosols – which are manmade and contain a considerable amount of materials such as plastic, concrete, brick – were only included in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources in 2006. After the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared 2015 the ‘International Year of Soils’, the ‘soils within cities’ were widely and increasingly recognised as a fundamental resource. A resource that provides a wide range of ecosystem services and is an effective means of mitigating climate change. Today, these soils represent a strong urban and ecological potential.
The impact of this evolution is quite substantial. In recent years, soil
has been emerging here and there as a medium that gives unexpected twists to the means and the discourse of the design discipline in architecture as well as urban planning. The precise application of a ‘living soil’ underpins ecological motives in urban planning. The subsoil appears as a burgeoning treasure trove full of trajectories leading to new achievements aboveground in landscape design and in urban projects. The reframing of building materials in their relationship to the ground (clay, loam, stones, earth, etcetera) provides countless ‘natural’ starting points for a design. It has even been suggested that the relationship between man and the earth (both planet and substance) can be sublimated as if The Earth is an Architecture.