Operating at the interstices of architecture, urbanism, and the pedosphere, SOILED is a venue for dialogue and exploration. It investigates the role that the built environment plays in social issues of earthly but marginalized proportions; it documents hidden systems and in-between spaces. Published by CARTOGRAM Architecture + Urban Design, SOILED curates ideas, from the arable to the obscene, by seeking the active participation of multi-disciplinary contributors. It employs narratives, manifestoes, mappings, ephemera, and live events to mediate its architectural discourse to the broader public.
Published twice per year on each solstice, SOILED is available in both a print edition and a free downloadable PDF! The inaugural issue, entitled Groundscrapers, is now available through their website. More images and description after the break.
Groundscrapers probes systems, populations, and infrastructures that occupy massive amounts of space in our existing cities, yet go unrecognized by typical urban dwellers. Rather than reaching vertically towards the sky, Groundscrapers seeks to reach horizontally across disciplines to cultivate meaningful moments along and within the pedosphere. Through conscious positioning of content, visual matter, sediment, and ephemera, Groundscrapers theorizes that the physicality of the printed page can transcend the bookshelf—that print media can orient itself with the surface of the earth, according to its geographical and architectural coordinates.
Contributors to this issue include the Department of Unusual Certainties, Stewart Hicks + Allison Newmeyer, Rael San Fratello Architects, John Szot Studio, Dan Weissman, and Katherine Darnstadt.
