Resilient Futures: Disrupting Material Cycles

Humans, in an effort to make their environment more productive and accommodating have changed both the definition and composition of what is considered constructed ground. We have re-shaped it, re-constituted it, and re-organized it; by first using ourselves – our body – as a metric, and then others – animals, objects, machinery. Eventually, these transformations arrive to industry and consumer standards – universal metrics that subsume all differences and diversities. In a research seminar at Cornell University, students engaged material definitions of terra firma as its site and program of inquiry. Through material-based, material-scaled mappings and experimental prototypes, students re-defined what we commonly refer to as constructed grounds – designing material profiles for its subsurface, surface, and super-surface.