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Some time ago TASCHEN Books published the edition of “Dig it! Building bound to the ground ». In its 1,390 pages, Dutch architect and founder of seArch Bjarne Mastenbroek and architectural photographer Iwan Baan dissect more than 500 cases and restore an understanding of the soil by studying the earth-connected architecture of the last millennium. On the occasion of the publication, Bjarne Mastenbroek spoke to Designboom, broadcasts APE-MPE.
There are six chapters in this review that reveal, through the culture of construction, the relationship of humanity with the Earth’s crust: “Bury”, “Embed”, “Absorb”, “Spiral”, “Carve” and “Mimic”. “We start below the ground, buried and move on to other strategies, from being completely underground to being embedded in a hillside, then being on top of nature, then curling up or down, then carving, like a cave of almost large volumes where we can proceed to the application of nature inside our buildings. So then we invite nature inside instead of burying it in the ground. And the last last option is, so to speak, imitation.
In densely populated cities, this is of great interest, and it can be seen today, that buildings are increasingly influenced by natural phenomena. So a building is like a tree or, a building is like a mountain or, it hovers, there you imitate nature inside your building “explains Bjarne Mastenbroek. “And the story also says that either people dug holes, or took refuge in caves until they started climbing trees and building small huts. It was really nice to find out that these strategies – bury, embed, absorb, spiral, carve and mimic- capture, in a way, this sequence.” (https://www.instagram.com/p/CTmrOpNjgGB/ ).
What criteria were used to select the buildings? “Mostly, it’s the buildings that fascinated me the most in my travels around the world,” he said, noting that some, such as stairwell tanks in India or yaodong, are underground houses in China where 40 million people lived. people, has not visited them. Unlike the churches in Lalibela in Ethiopia where he has gone. “Architecture can have an element of healing. We live in the anthropocene, so you can say that everything is built on earth. And architecture is the only thing that is attached to the Earth’s crust. It becomes part of the Earth “he emphasizes. “You can plant trees in buildings, you can invite nature inside. Today, we invite animals to our buildings, we can build for bats, for bees, for birds, etc., so we can heal with architecture, it may be the answer to a part of our problem. I think architecture is completely different from any other human energy, because we are literally screwing it to Earth.”
Speaking of “Dig it! Building bound to the ground “, says Bjarne Mastenbroek:” I think the book shows that there is a more varied and more intelligent way to build. To help people believe that, yes, we can. And like I said, we have to do it better, we have to do it much, much better. “Because we have to somehow heal the Earth.”
More details about the version, at the link https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/ architecture/all/04697/facts.bjarne_mastenbroek_dig_it_ building_bound_to_the_ground.htm .