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.