Main Content
Abstract
Despite the fundamental role soil plays in the making of the built environment, designers and engineers typically approach it as a technical object—a problem to solve. This lecture will share the design methodologies, representational strategies, and theoretical frameworks that have emerged from engaging creatively with soil dynamics in both research and practice.
An analysis of the mixing and circulation of manufactured substrates in the New York metropolitan area reveals how soil is shaped as much by design decisions, real estate trends, and commodity flows as by traditional processes of soil formation, or pedogenesis. Tracing these social and political relationships helps to denaturalize soil, opening space for alternative approaches that integrate community engagement and long-term management strategies.
The second part of the lecture will explore the intersection of design and pedogenesis through projects located marginal landscapes, ranging from a drought-stricken agricultural region in northeastern Spain to a former chemical manufacturing complex in Switzerland and oil extraction sites in the American Midwest. These projects approach soil as an active and evolving medium, serving to test the participatory design and maintenance strategies that could support these extensive and gradual interventions. Embracing the slow and unpredictable process of pedogenesis challenges conventional notions of authorship and control, encouraging designers to engage in longer-term, collaborative processes of landscape transformation.
Biography
Luke Harris is a registered landscape architect and doctoral candidate at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies at ETH Zurich. His research examines the metabolism of designed urban substrates in the New York metropolitan area. He is a founding member of the collective Office of Living Things, which develops community-based design strategies to foster dynamic living systems. Previously, he practiced at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, where he focused on planting design and landscape infrastructure projects. He is a committed and innovative educator, with experience teaching design studios and seminars at the ETH Zurich and Politecnico di Milano.
His work has been published in Landscape Research Journal and OASE Journal of Architecture, as well as in several edited volumes, including Researching Otherwise: Pluriversal Methodologies for Landscape and Urban Studies, which won the 2024 Deutsches Architekturmuseum Book Prize. He is a co-organizer of the 2025 NSL Colloquium at ETH Zurich, Beyond Maintenance: Responsive Practices for Changing Landscapes. He holds a BA in International Studies from Macalester College and an MLA from the University of Virginia, where he received the Stanley and Helen Abbott Award for excellence in landscape architecture and the Benjamin C. Howland Traveling Fellowship.