Description
Book SynopsisThis book investigates the relationship architecture has with the underground. It provides a broad ranging historical and theoretical survey of, and critical reflection on, ideas pertaining to the creation and occupation of underground space. It overturns the classic dictates of construction on the surface and through numerous examples explores recoveries of existing voids, excavations, caves, quarries, grottos and burrows.
The exploitation of land, especially in areas of particular value, has given rise to the need to reformulate the usual approach to building. If the development of urban sprawl, its infrastructure and its networks, generates increasingly compromised landscapes, what are the possible strategies to transform, expand and change the usual relationship between abuse of soil and unused subsoil?
Psychological, philosophical, literary and cinematographic legacies of underground architecture are mixed with the compositional, typological and constructive expedie
Trade Review
"Antonello Boschi investigates the subject in a wide-ranging interdisciplinary, historical and theoretical survey. Inverting the classic dictates of surface construction, he explores possible strategies for transforming, expanding and changing the typical relationship between the mistreatment of land and unused subsoil."
Francesca Tagliabue, Abitare, excerpt from The charm of underground, https://www.abitare.it/en/research/publications/2022/05/27/antonello-boschi-underground-architecture-strategies/
"Quarries, subways, cellars, grottos and underpasses seem to overturn the rule that says buildings only exist above ground, facing the need to exploit urban space down to the last square centimetre. As Michael Jakob reminds us in his introduction, "architecture has always been lair, cavern, shelter, also and above all. So thinking about the underground means thinking about architecture."
Elena Sommariva, excerpt from domus 1069 June 2022
Table of Contents1. Huddling 2. Notes from the underground 3. The city other 4. Mimicry 5. Novelty is but oblivion 6. Stone skies 7. Sensations 8. Sous passages 9. Buried high-rises 10. Brightening the dark Bibliography Index
