Boring Across Jitudao’s River, Canal & Dam
Intersection of Architecture, Landscape, & Geology
Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, 2023
A WEI+ZKA Project
Geological surveys typically operate in the background of architecture, unnoticed yet essential. The exhibition turns this process on its head, pulling the act of soil sampling and geological investigation into the conceptual domain of architectural design. Here, the invisible forces beneath the surface take center stage as the exhibition poses a critical question: can architecture move beyond its surface obsession and engage with the ground as an active collaborator?
“Architecture must dig deeper—both literally and conceptually—turning the ground...into an active collaborator.”
The Legacy of Surface Obsession
Architecture has treated the surface as its primary canvas for centuries, designing forms and spaces atop the earth while ignoring the deeper, subterranean realities. The exhibition challenges this surface fixation, advocating for a more holistic architectural approach considering the geological forces underpinning construction. The project aligns itself with traditions in land art. Still, it pushes further by treating the earth not as a passive material to be manipulated but as an integral part of the architectural process.
Digging Deeper
The exhibition reframes geological surveys as an ideological and architectural provocation. By boring into the earth, analyzing soil, and interpreting its composition, the exhibition disrupts conventional practices, turning the survey into a philosophical question about the relationship between the architect and the ground. This shift challenges the idea that architecture begins on the surface, suggesting that what lies beneath should inform design and become a central part of the architectural dialogue. How might the act of boring, typically seen as a preparatory task, reshape the way we understand the foundation of architectural practice?
The Geological Imagination
Architecture has long been tied to inhabiting the surface, but the exhibition offers a speculative future where the practice becomes deeply intertwined with geology. As environmental shifts reshape the ground itself, architecture must evolve to consider both visible and hidden layers of the earth. The exhibition imagines a future where buildings respond to environmental conditions above ground and the dynamic materiality below, forging new forms of interaction between architecture and the planet’s geological systems.
Building the Unseen
The exhibition challenges architects to reimagine their relationship with the earth, suggesting that architecture’s future lies in a deeper collaboration with the geological world. By elevating the act of boring into the ground from a technical process to a conceptual provocation, the exhibition offers a vision for architecture that goes beyond surface-level mastery. In this speculative future, the ground itself becomes an active force in design, shaping spaces that are as responsive to what lies beneath as they are to what stands above.
Conducting a site survey to gather geological samples
Digital model of the site
Satellite images of the site from 2022
Local farmers sharing insights into the soil’s historical evolution and gathering soil samples
Subsurface Analysis:
Machine Learning Diagrams of Soil Composition
A view of the survey landscape, segmented into a grid to organize sampling locations. Each red dot marks designated sample points.
Numbered soil cores, with each site captured in close-up photos. Machine learning translates these images into color-coded diagrams, highlighting distinct soil compositions and depths.
Installation
Isometric drawings