Groundscapes

The re-discovery of the ground in contemporary architecture | Land&Scape Series
Edited by Ilka & Andreas Ruby
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2006 | 206p, 150x210mm, English/Spanish, ISBN 978-84-252-1963-4

Groundscapes explores the “come-back” of the idea of the ground onto the scene of contemporary architecture. When Le Corbusier in 1925 declared buildings should be put on pilotis, he de facto turned the ground into the scorched earth of modernism’s quest for progress. The ground was seen as an unwanted linkage with the history, place and gravity which modernism wanted to overcome. With the decline of heroic modernism in the late 1960s a new generation of architects eager discover this forbidden land initiated a reterritorialisation of architecture which continues until today. As a consequence, we can understand built space and ground space no longer as opposites, but as equal elements of the architectural body.

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