Since early times, humans have explored the space below their feet for different purposes: to flee persecution and war, to find protection from severe climates, to improve urban life—and more recently, to solve environmental problems. A rare look at old and new subterranean structures from an architect's perspective, this seminal book examines the underworld through the lenses of wartime, life and death, religious and secular rituals, and adaptive reuse. The atlas of 80+ international projects ranges widely in time period and type, from a house in a defunct nuclear silo to an Arctic seed bank, a Beirut nightclub, art venues, an Italian winery, and a monastery carved into a mountain. All are surprising examples of how invisible man-made spaces follow the same cultural and economic cues as their visible counterparts and are places where we store, hide, repress, and live.
Chapter 1 - Upside Down: The Making of the City
The Quest for Water
Surveillance and Control
Transit Systems
Data Center: The Rise of a New Typology
Chapter 2 - Design as Warfare
The Eastern Bloc
The United States, Asia, and the Middle East
Western Europe
Chapter 3 - Life and Death in the Underworld
Domesticity in Early Civilizations
Ancient Rites and Rituals
Back to the Earth
Chapter 4 - Emerging from Darkness
Memory and Symbolism
Building Connections
Pushing Boundaries: Reuse and Irony
Sacred Spaces
Chapter 5 - On Nature and Artifice
Carving, Digging, Modeling
Imitation and Camouflage
Hybrid Experiments
ISBN
9780764358401Title
Notes from the Underworld: An Architectural ExplorationAuthor
Stefano CorboPublisher
SchifferPublication year
2019Binding
HardcoverLanguage
English
