Making time for soil

Abstract

In this article, three particular interior-architectural artifacts and environments, connected as past and present expressions of home and (in)(co)habitation, present an idea of openness that invites the reader to re-figure the quasi unquestioned relationship between interior and soil. This involves breaking up the material and conceptual but also the political and moral boundaries that set and keep interior and soil apart. First, two domed interiors of the past are explored, which in our interpretation each have operated as a lens on soil—an element that remains a dark alterity and a matter largely out of scope of interior-architectural interests and investigations. Based on our lived experiences in these interiors, the article constructs an argument for interior practices that more consciously and radically involve with and care for soil. For this it specifically connects to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s work Matters of Care. 2015 having been declared as the International Year of Soils by the United Nations and soil being related to various Sustainability Development Goals, there is an urgent challenge for involvements with that vibrant matter. Herein, the interior and interior-architecture, as a material artifact or a practice of care, can play important roles. The two domed interiors of the past serving as an experiential backdrop, the article then foregrounds the active design driven research expedition S for Soil Times, which currently develops as part of a series of 26 artifacts that together constitute a research line and a novel alphabet for re-figuring interior-architecture by introducing to it a particular openness: an openness that makes time for soil.

KEYWORDS:

• interior
• interior-architecture
• soil
• care
• vibrant matters

Acknowledgements

We wish to explicitly thank the reviewers of our article for their care and enthusiasm with our theme and the many valuable and detailed insights they have provided, truly opening up new directions of inquiry for our research.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Excerpted from the book launch conversation 1.47 mbar, between Peter Swinnen, Nikolaus Hirsch, A.J. Lode Janssens, Barbara Van der Wee and Pieter Uyttenhove, CIVA, Brussels, March 10^th 2022.

2 Lecture Wild Ecology, given by Fuminori Nousaku on May 5^th 2022, as part of the Going Public series of lectures, KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas Ghent & Brussels.

3 Both authors are part of Architecture & Wicked Matters (A&WM), a research line within the larger research group Material Narratives at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas. The research line 26 Artifacts to Re-Figure Architecture was set up in A&WM from 2021 on by Nel Janssens, Johan Liekens, and Annelies De Smet, and its startup has been documented in publications (see references).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jo Liekens

Jo Liekens holds an MSc in architecture. He is a partner at STUDIOLO architectuur. He is a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, campus Sint-Lucas, Brussels & Ghent. He obtained a doctoral (double) degree at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture (BE) and the Chalmers University of Technology, ACE department, Gothenburg (SE), with a thesis titled Architecture’s Poetic Instrumentality: Developing the Critical, Political, and Ethical Capacities of Architectural Artifacts. His post-doctoral research currently focuses on architecture as a political-aesthetical practice able to assist in re-figuring the congregations of matter that compose our (sense of) world(s). It specifically focuses on the architectural artifact conceived as a peculiar agonistic stage able to assist in negotiating this sense of world(s), traversed by human and more-than-human agencies. Liekens teaches design studios in the bachelor and master programs of Interior-Architecture and Architecture at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, campus Sint-Lucas, Brussels and Ghent. He also engaged in design driven research projects using various hands-on explorations of architectural matter. Email: [email protected]

Nel Janssens

Nel Janssens holds a MSc in architecture and urban planning. She is associate prof. at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, campus Sint-Lucas Brussels & Ghent. She obtained a doctoral degree at the Department of Architecture, Chalmers University of Technology, where she remained a visiting scholar for many years as a member of the Strong Research Environment ‘Architecture in the Making’ and the research school ‘Resarc’ where she co-developed doctoral training courses for architects. Her research interest is directed to the link between critical theory and design driven research. In 2019 she founded, together with Annelies De Smet and Jo Liekens, the research group ‘Architecture & Wicked Matters’. Research efforts address what kind of architectural practices and types of spaces we need to develop if matter is no longer inert, passive, dead and non-responsive but becomes lively, animated, vibrant and a true metamorphic and morphogenetic force. Janssens has also a keen interest in design driven and transdisciplinary research methods. She co-edited together with Isabelle Doucet the book: Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism: towards Hybrid Modes of Inquiry (Springer 2011). And together with Fredrik Nilsson and Halina Dunin-Woyseth the book:. Perspectives on Research Assessment in Architecture, Music and the Arts: Discussing Doctorateness (Routledge 2017). She is currently campus chair of the Faculty of Architecture, campus Sint-Lucas, Brussels and Ghent.