SOIL FUTURES
Master dissertation studio 2026-27
Supervisors: Nel Janssens and Hélène Frichot
in collaboration with Johan Liekens
Engagement: Mediating Tactics
Campus Gent
Language NL/EN
Studio or individual: Both, integrated
Max. 10 students
In the studio max. 2 theory-based dissertations can be imbedded
Lead image: Design Hypothesis Soil Futures. drawing: Johan Liekens
“Soils have slowly emerged from their hibernation in society’s cultural imagination as well as research. A growing body of research has brought soils onto the climate crisis agenda suggesting the urgency of transforming society-soil relations […].” (humuseconomicus.se)
In this studio we engage with soil as a largely neglected material world in which our architectures are grounded. Recently, severe problems have arisen as soil layers shrink because of drought and hardening of surfaces, while they also suffer from contamination. Soil Futures aim to investigate how architecture can become a soil-sensitive infrastructure that cares for and repairs the soil it is grafted in. Caring for soil is connected to the revaluing of waste and dirt as soil-generative matters. To do this, we shift our design efforts to the potentiality of soil-caring and repairing architectural elements. Consider infrastructural elements such as the toilet (attached to gargantuan underground infrastructures), the kitchen (insufficiently engaged with its forms of waste), roofing and plumbing (mindlessly evacuating water), and so on. These infrastructural elements and others can be refigured in what we choose as our strategic site of engagement: urban corners. At these corner sites we explore material practices that inherently incorporate and literally make room for recovering, cultivating, or even gardening these wicked, living, more-than-human matters. By repurposing urban corners into habitable soil-sensitive infrastructures, opportunities emerge for the larger urban entity of the building block and the local neighbourhood, generating novel architectural and urban qualities for inhabitants.
The methodology used in this studio is design-based research informed by relevant theories. Concrete design activity together with theoretical and technical frameworks will be mixed as we aim to combine fabulation with grounded and material explorations. In this we use methods that belong to (norm-) Critical Design, including the use of critical fictions, speculative fabulations, environmental storyings…
Read the extended studio description here (pdf).