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Architects carefully calibrate their relationship to the earth, adjusting foundations to soil, groundwater, climate, risk, and culture. Driven timber piles, rammed-earth platforms, and poured concrete slabs are each a response to a specific set of ground conditions, and each shapes the architecture that rises from it. The way a building meets the earth determines its durability and its limits because foundations are among the most consequential design choices an architect makes.

The city of Rotterdam sits approximately one meter below sea level, an organizing condition that shapes daily life in the Netherlands' second-largest city and is a growing preoccupation amid unstable coastal conditions. The city occupies the delta of the Rhine and Maas rivers, a landscape that was never naturally dry but has been kept functional through centuries of hydraulic intervention. The water boards in this region are among the oldest democratic institutions in the world, created in the thirteenth century to manage shared water drainage and still operating today as elected bodies with technical capacity. As sea levels rise and rainfall across Northern Europe grows less predictable and more extreme, Rotterdam faces a significantly increased risk of coastal storm surges and urban flooding driven by overwhelmed drainage infrastructure.

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The well-known phrase "man is what he eats" (Der Mensch ist, was er isst), by Ludwig Feuerbach, asserts that the physical, mental, and even moral constitution of human beings is directly linked to what they consume. Today, this idea is widely internalized, with growing awareness around food, nutrition, and the impact of what we ingest on our bodies. Yet, this same level of awareness doesn't extend to the environments we inhabit, where materials continue to be treated as technical decisions rather than active agents in the relationship between body and space. Considering that a large portion of the global population spends around 90% of their time indoors, it is rarely discussed what actually composes these spaces at their most fundamental level: materials. Walls, floors, and finishes are often approached as technical or aesthetic choices, when in reality they can function as continuous sources of exposure to potentially harmful substances.

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