LECTURE BY DOMINIQUE PERRAULT “ABOVE / BELOW – THE GROUNDSCAPE”
Introduced by Kengo Kuma at the Tokyo University
GROUNDSCAPE
FRANCE
SINCE 1980
GROUNDSCAPE
R–002
Beneath the ground line hides a universe of possibilities, new places, existing or to be created. The Groundscape is the last space to conquer for our cities, offering a powerful catalyst of urban networks, a naturally ideal thermal inertia, respect for the landscape, enhancement of heritage and a unique palette of lights.
Image Caption / Credits
Image Caption / Credits
By playing with the reliefs, hollows, breakthroughs or overhangs, the Groundscape offers different typologies, each expressing a particular relationship to the ground, to light, movement and perception. These figures of the Groundscape are not simple formal games: they raise a fundamental question about how we inhabit the thickness of the world. Reconciling space and matter, the typologies of the Groundscape invite us to rethink our relationship with the ground, no longer as a sole support but as living, sculptable, habitable matter. The different typologies offer a spatial grammar to work on the relationship between humans and earth, between architecture and landscape.
“For architects, the ground has always constituted a limit, a threshold between heaven and earth, between the aerial and the underground, architecture being defined in visibility, that of its forms, that of its facades. This dividing line, this cultural refusal of the subsoil, will often have left the underworld in the hands of engineering alone, which has forged, over the course of industrial revolutions, a chaotic mix of networks, the obscure reverse of our cities.
Image Caption / Credits
Image Caption / Credits
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PROGRAM
Situation
France
Year
Since 1980
Status
Research, groundscape
Research implementation
Dominique Perrault
Research interior architect and design
Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost
DESCRIPTION
From the studies conducted for the construction of the National Library of France in 1989, DPA initiated a specific research on the link between architecture and soil, named «Groundscape». This approach explores the long-neglected dimension of urban planning: the underside of our cities.
READ MORE
The book “Groundscapes, autres topographies”, published by Dilecta editions in 2015 and resulting from exchanges with Frédéric Migayrou, refocuses research around the Groundscape and presents the emblematic achievements of the agency related to soil (National Library of France – Paris, Ewha University – Seoul, Olympic Stadium and Velodrome – Berlin…). Divided into eight chapters, it explores the different issues raised by the Groundscape (from fiction as a method of creation to questions of ecology, engineering, urbanism and geography) and proposes, through a rich iconography, a reflection on the contours of a new urbanity, a universe of possibilities, of new or existing places, to imagine or create.
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