Earth: The Latest Architecture and News

Space exploration isn’t merely a testament to human ambition or a quest for new territories and resources. Our ventures beyond Earth’s atmosphere are driven by a deeper purpose: to understand better our place in the cosmos and to pioneer innovations that can transform life on our home planet.

While venturing beyond our planet captures the imagination, the true impact of space exploration may be felt much closer to home. Public perception often frames space exploration as a distant endeavor with limited relevance to terrestrial challenges. However, this perspective overlooks the substantial contributions of space programs to our world. By driving technological innovation, expanding our scientific knowledge, and inspiring future generations, space exploration has proven to be an invaluable catalyst for addressing global issues.

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The historical journey of construction also tells the story of humanity. The enduring examples from the past reveal insights into their specific contexts, and the remnants that have survived the elements and decay narrate the development of human technology. In the early days of construction, the common (and often the only) practice available to humans was to use locally available raw materials. For many, this meant building with clay.

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By recognizing and analyzing the multiple architectural possibilities of bamboo—a construction material mostly native to warm and tropical areas—the following questions arise: How can we take advantage of its qualities and enhance its use in colder climates? Such regions necessarily require a certain level of thermal isolation in walls, floors, and roofs—but for these climates, we can combine bamboo with materials that complement it.

We spoke with Penny Livingston-Stark, a designer and professor of permaculture who has worked for 25 years in the field of regenerative design based on non-toxic natural materials, to understand the opportunities offered by combining bamboo with earth.

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Being one of the first construction methods developed by humans, earth has proven its resilience and durability over time. While construction techniques have evolved and been updated over the years, there is still a long way to explore where the understanding of climate, geographic location, sustainability, structural requirements, and other factors determine its degree of application.

With low environmental impact and the ability to be used through a wide variety of techniques, such as rammed earth walls or 'tapiales,' this material offers the possibility of providing not only aesthetic but also thermal comfort, insulation, and other benefits. With the intention of discovering the different ways it has been used, we set out to select 12 projects distributed throughout Latin America, spanning Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Ecuador.

With an air of simplicity and wisdom, engineer Julio Vargas Neumann welcomes us. His two dogs accompany us as we descend after the necessary ascent to enter, and we are also accompanied by the stone walls defining the lot. We sit down and begin - or continue - the interview and conversation regarding the value of 'shicras', local materials, and earth construction. We also discuss criticisms of cement, aluminum, and steel, as well as perspectives on the future of materials in Peru and the world. Likewise, we delve into the long-neglected and recurrent rural problem in South America, discussing the inexorable need to change paradigms and priorities.

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Rock salt is a chemical sedimentary rock that forms through the evaporation of water, as minerals dissolve and settle down. When excavated directly from the earth, it maintains a cube-shaped crystalline form. With its diverse textures, compositions and structures, this natural element has captivated human interest for centuries. Depending on the region and environmental conditions, salt rock has been found in diverse applications in architecture, such as a construction material that uses blocks of salt to build structures, bricks, or tiles. Often translucent, these bricks allow diffused light to enter interior spaces, creating a unique atmosphere and aesthetic appeal.

Giving this ancient material a modern twist, Casalgrande Padana uses rock salt as the inspiration for its new Supreme porcelain stoneware tile collection. By replicating the colors, texture and brightness of natural sedimentary rock, this collection can be seen as a fascinating journey to discover the unique features of the center of the Earth.

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Francelle Cane and Marija Marić have been selected to curate the Luxembourg Pavilion was unanimously selected by the jury to create at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia with an exhibition project titled "Down to Earth." The project explores the "wild imaginaries of extraction-driven growth," such as the development of human settlements on the Moon or the asteroid mining of rare minerals and metals. As the starting point for the exhibition, the team questions the impact of this new space race that promises endlessly available resources beyond the limits of Earth. The commissioner of the pavilion, the Ministry of Culture Luxembourg, has appointed Kultur|lx—Arts Council Luxembourg to produce the exhibition in cooperation with LUCA—Luxembourg Center for Architecture. The Pavilion will be open from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.

Kengo Kuma’s proposal for The National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, aims to draw attention to the importance of science in archaeology, the value of its collections, and the fundamental role and character of the museum in the present and the future. As the memory of the museum is traced back, words in acts of burying, concealing, and revealing begin to emerge. These three words are pivotal transitional moments that help shape the museum into what it is today and pave the way for its future application.

The relationship between architecture and nature is complex. If, on the one hand, we enjoy framing nature as art in our homes; on the other hand, we try at all costs to avoid the presence of obstructive "real" nature in our walls and structures, which can be damaged by roots and leaves. At the same time, we use green roofs, vertical gardens and flower boxes to bring cities closer to nature and improve people's wellbeing; but we also construct buildings with materials that are completely dissociated from fauna and flora. Although the advancement of biomaterials and new technologies is gradually changing this, we should nevertheless ask ourselves whether the structures and buildings we occupy need to be separated from the nature that surrounds them. This was the question that led researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) to develop geometrically complex 3D-printed soil structures on which plants could grow freely.

Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture the City, an ambitious artwork of an extraordinary size, will begin to accept visits from the public beginning September 2, 2022. The announcement was made by the Triple Aught Foundation, the not-for-profit organization responsible for managing the long-term oversight and maintenance of Michael Heizer’s immense sculpture. The artwork, a mile and a half long and nearly half a mile wide, is located in a remote stretch of the high Nevada desert. Work on the structure began in 1972 when the artist was 27 years old.

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Rammed earth constructions are not a novelty, on the contrary, some sections of the Great Wall of China were made using this technique. Relegated and replaced by modern methods of construction, the mud walls are currently re-emerging as an economic, sustainable solution, with low environmental impact. Even Joelle Eyeson, a young African entrepreneur, is betting that it may be the answer to the housing deficit in her region.

This is a rudimentary construction system in which earth is compressed into wooden boxes. The clay is horizontally placed in layers of 15 cm in height, and compacted with manual or pneumatic tools, to achieve its ideal density creating a resistant and durable structure.

Vernacular techniques and local materials are becoming more and more relevant in architecture, but is it possible to bring these concepts to large urban areas?

In 1984, the Amazonian architect Severiano Porto had already pointed out the need to make architecture more connected to its location. Using local materials and techniques is becoming more important each day, considering the impacts of the commodity chain of building construction on the planet. Not surprisingly, the number of projects that use this approach is growing every day, as Severiano has already mentioned in his work since the 1980s.

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