Soil Cover

The Super Terram research project aims to rediscover the perennial and often unknown ecosystems of urban (and particularly fallow) soils. Its related ideas are learning to care for or even ‘learning to see’ these ecosystems, its approach “like a joyous exploration aiming to interrogate and renew our relationship to urban soils”. In Brussels, the team members concentrated their research on a dozen sites nestled on the edges of the natural railway corridor linking the Gare du Nord train station end to the Schaerbeek Formation platform.

It was within this context that I was invited to conceive a cover that would aid in this educational journey. Working in close collaboration with architects Johanna Bendlin and Giulia Ravera, we imagined a textile-based device for observing living soils – a tool to bring people together while getting closer to the earth; an object that could be deployed on past and future research sites, establishing a relationship between ground and action. The cover was made entirely from reused fabrics provided by the Souplothèque. The diversity of these fabrics allowed us to envisage several readings and interactions with the environment in question. In different configurations, the cover reconciles both human comfort and that which surpasses it while remaining flexible and adaptable to the constraints of the site. We inaugurated it with members of the Super Terram project during a picnic to celebrate the summer solstice.