TVK

The Earth is an architecture. It is constantly metamorphosing—particularly the relatively thin film that occupies the outermost 15 kilometers of Earth’s 6,371 kilometer radius. Its body is continually formed and transformed by the actions and reactions of all those who, living or non-living, animate it. Humans are one of the major powers that participate in the vast site of construction common to all material elements and living organisms. Architecture is to be considered from this position of interdependence. Lines, surfaces, volumes, build the fragments of inhabited archipelagos shared by humans and all the other earthly powers. Every transformation of the common ground is registered in the sedimentary complex where rocks, earth, organic residues, and human artifacts intermingle. Each and every building is a summit, a spur or promontory, a depression, a fold, a ditch. Each and every town and city is a range of mountains, a basin, or a valley. Each and every construction is a part of the world. Architecture has a telluric-like inner fortitude that is a geological necessity. Architecture is not what is set and placed on the Earth by human beings, but the perpetual shaping of the Earth. Architecture is the form which is forever emerging from the close embrace between living beings and the Earth. Architecture is an Earth.

The piece The Earth is an Architecture is the product of a fundamental research, conducted by TVK since 2015. As architects, we are now exploring new representations to reflect the continuous reshaping of the Earth, highlighted by current research on living matter. After being flat, then a sphere, today the Earth is an architecture. 

Within this vision, this “fictional Earth” is exploring the concept of infrastructure as a mediation between humanity and the Earth. Infrastructures do not colonize the ground but create liveable commons. They allow societies to inhabit the planet by anchoring themselves in its geological, biological and geographical history. Inspired by realistic situations, the piece presents a diversity of infrastructural archetypes arranged into fictional continents. It tells the story of lines, surfaces, volumes, fragments, that build together a set of archipelagos. The transformations they generate on the ground are registered in the geological layers represented in their three dimensions.

This “situated manifesto” opens the horizon for new architectural fictions. It invites us to take the measure of planetary dynamics at work and to participate in the perpetual construction site shared by earthly matters and living beings.

Institut français

TVK
Model Making: The Consortium Team