December 2023
Worlding soils. Caring for soil communities in Minett
19 December 2023–13 January 2024
Luxembourg Center for Architecture (luca)
Design Studio Lecturers:
Dr. Marija Maric
Dr. David Peleman
Dr. César Reyes Nájera
Students:
Jessie Addy, Muhammad Altamash Baig, Anna Carter, Ephra Charlton Hutchinson, Wilhelm Gardeleone, Muhammad Hamza, Astrid Hennus, Christine Jiayi Chen, Vanessa Jung, Milad Khodabandehloo, Cansu Kok, Mariia Leonenko, Aditya Nambissan, Sandrine Nef, Emmanuel Ogundiran, Chiara Pasquarelli, Cindy Seminario, Ramzi Shadid, Shefket Shala, Kristina Shatokhina, Cornelis Van Der Male, Sreenidhi Wupadastra
This exhibition features the work, questions, proposals and strategies for soil care and repair developed by students of the Master in Architecture at the University of Luxembourg. In a cross-disciplinary design studio the students explored the physical, social, environmental, economic and political conditions of soil, outlining its alterstories—other imaginaries of living together in the post-mining territory of Minett. Going beyond the common understanding of the underground as a passive recipient of urban processes, the studio questioned the role of design in building soil communities and enabling environments for more-than-human forms of co-existence. Accompanied by a series of public lectures, fieldtrips, and conversations with international and local soil researchers and practitioners, the semester resulted in seven student projects, each developed as a collaborative group work.
The studio opened up questions—what would it mean to build soil communities and how to break the line between the ground and the underground? What could be the role of architectural design and urban planning in building interdependencies between all those who have been shaped by the same conditions of extraction and who share life in the ruins of environmental destruction? Worlding Soil. Caring for Soil Communities in Minett is a call for what Hélène Frichot outlined as dirty theory, theory that “helps architecture think about the ordinary gestures of care, repair and maintenance that can form part of its mandate.”
