Concept: Ceren Erdem and Bilge Kalfa
Design: Bilge Kalfa Architecture
Production: Förni and Mono Earth
Sound installation: Michael Akstaller
2025
At the heart of Grounded lies in – a circular, immersive structure covered with the soil of Türkiye. This monumental form draws visitors inward, inviting them to engage physically and sensorially with the material intelligence of the soil. While in grounds the body in tactile immediacy, encircling the visitor with earth, a site-specific sound installation by Michael Akstaller envelops the space in subterranean resonance – recordings of underground vibrations and earthly murmurs.
in embodies the living, layered archive of the land. It is a chamber for attunement: to the memory of soil, to its microbial life, geological depth and cultural significance. Formed with ancient construction knowledge and contemporary techniques, it stands not only as a vessel of knowledge but as a proposal for the future – one in which architecture listens to the earth, collaborates with it, and roots itself in mutual care and understanding.
We Only Perceive Soil when it Reaches the Surface
Sound installation
2025
This work explores soil as a living archive where time folds, histories converge and the past resurfaces in nonlinear ways. Digging into the ground reveals more than layers – it uncovers entangled temporalities shaped by tectonic shifts, biological life and human activity.
Sound serves as a way to trace these movements. Not merely an audible event, it is understood here as vibration, impulse, and resonance – a means of sensing the soil’s hidden processes. The recordings were made across diverse sites in and around Istanbul: from islands, forests, cemeteries, beaches and agricultural zones to industrial areas, dams, Byzantine and Ottoman ruins and a cave dating back 300,000 years. Each location contributes to a textured sonic landscape that collapses past and present. We Only Perceive Soil when it Reaches the Surface listens to the ground as a dynamic medium – alive with memory, movement and transformation.
.jpg)
Covering Earth
Felt-based textile with embedded microbial cultures, soil
2025
Covering Earth explores how soil can heal after decades of extraction, erosion and industrial impact. It introduces a method of microbial inoculation using bio-repair mats woven from organic fibres and embedded with microbial cultures collected from across Türkiye. As these mats decompose, they gradually release specific microorganisms into the soil, enriching it, neutralising heavy metals and correcting imbalances.
Rather than offering a technological fix, Covering Earth draws attention to the invisible wounds of soil degradation and the urgent need for care. It proposes a shift from exploitation to stewardship – calling on us to tend to the land with intention, respect and patience.
Soil Pigment Separations: Revealing the Layers of Earth
Photographic emulsion, soil, acid-free paper, lightbox, 24 pieces, 47 × 47 cm (each)
2023
This work reveals the hidden layers of soil beneath a 395-year-old plane tree through a process inspired by biochemical separation. Pigments extracted from minerals, humus and organic matter create a visual narrative of slow transformation, unfolding over thousands of years. Created without a camera, the resulting images serve as soil archives – capturing the geological, biological and human forces that shape the land.
In Grounded, the work invites viewers to see soil not as inert matter but as an active, living record. It mirrors the exhibition’s themes of displacement, transformation, and interconnectedness, drawing parallels between natural cycles and human interventions such as excavation, construction, and settlement.
Cosmic Core
Rammed earth, R: 33 × 138 cm (h)
2025
Drawing on humanity’s instinct to collect soil samples when encountering new worlds, Cosmic Core explores the intersection of scientific curiosity and artistic expression. Using rammed-earth and clay-printing techniques, the work evokes the layered surfaces and geological intricacies of distant planets. Traditional craftsmanship meets digital design as stratified textures and parametric forms give shape to imagined cosmic archives.
In Grounded, Cosmic Core occupies the point where curiosity to understand the history of the land intersects with the imagination of future possibilities. Soil-sample blocks serve as the archives of the land, and the Cosmic Core series reinterprets these blocks as expressive forms through parametric design processes.
Shell series
Shell #06, 2011. Archival pigment print on aluminum, framed 110 × 138 cm
Shell #07, 2011. Archival pigment print on aluminum, framed diptych, 90 × 234 cm
Shell #21, 2013. Archival pigment print on aluminum, framed tetraptych, 90 × 448 cm
This photographic series traces the transformation of Istanbul’s periphery, capturing the city’s ongoing cycles of construction, demolition and reconstruction. Taken between 2011 and 2013, the selected images document quarries and excavation sites that both fuel urban growth and threaten existing communities.
Shell reveals how materials circulate through Istanbul’s changing landscape: from quarries to construction sites, from demolition zones to dumping grounds – many of which are former lignite mines now filled with refuse. The final link in this chain is Istanbul’s new airport, symbolising a dystopian endpoint in the city’s relentless development. The series exposes the fragile intersection of physical space, social structure and ecological strain, inviting reflection on the cost of transformation in a city constantly remaking itself.
Gods of Latmos
2023–ongoing
Balıktaş Cave, January 2025 and Karadere Mining Field, December 2024
Archival pigment print on dibond, 40 × 100 cm (each)
Hollow #2
Video projection on rock, 5' 40"
2025
Set in the ancient Latmos Mountain of southwest Türkiye, Gods of Latmos contrasts two starkly different relationships with stone: one rooted in reverence, the other in extraction. The project centres on 8,000-year-old rock paintings discovered in the Karadere Valley – images of community (predominantly female) and harmony, integrated seamlessly into the prehistoric landscape.
Juxtaposed with these ancestral artworks are the scars of modern feldspar mining, which now threatens this geological and cultural heritage. The work includes two photographic prints – one of the Balıktaş cave paintings, the other of the Karakaya open-pit mine – and a video installation, Hollow, inspired by the altar once dedicated to a weather god and echoing the mining lakes now pocking the terrain.
Gods of Latmos calls for a renewed relationship between humanity and nature – one that blends ancestral knowledge with contemporary technology in pursuit of a more respectful and sustainable future.
Orbs
Stone, 25 pieces, R:3 cm
Produced on various dates
Rooted in the landscapes of the city of Şanlıurfa near Göbeklitepe, a Neolithic archaeological site dated to 9,500 BCE, Orbs explores the enduring relationship between people, place and stone. The work began with the discovery of a traditional street game – gülle – still played with hand-crafted stone orbs in contemporary urban spaces. This seemingly simple act of play opens a portal into the region’s layered history, linking ancient stone-working traditions to present-day communal rituals.
As part of Grounded, Orbs becomes a testament to resilience and continuity. It reflects how everyday gestures, such as play, can preserve heritage and hold space for collective identity amid constant change.
Scab Series
Scab I-II
Walnut ink on paper, 75 × 100 cm & 75 × 95.5 cm (respectively)
2022
Scab III-XI
Walnut ink and watercolor on paper, 39.5 × 30.5 cm & 42 × 29,5 cm & 42 × 31 cm & 30 × 27,5 cm & 34,5 × 24,5 cm & 29,5 × 27,5 cm & 42 × 30,5 cm & 42 × 30 cm & 30 × 21 cm (respectively)
2024
These walnut ink paintings on paper, featuring ruins and the harmala plant, explore how harmala takes root in the soil of ruins, creating new possibilities for life. Walnut ink was selected to depict the ruins, resembling a scab-covered wound, because it was used in embalming in ancient Egypt and later became a common material in architectural restorations. With this ink, the ruins seem to undergo a restoration process on paper.
Harmala (Peganum harmala L.) thrives in soils rich in phosphorus and is often found around ruins and cemeteries. Archaeologists frequently seek this plant to determine where to dig when searching for traces of past life at a site. It is as if the plant waits for someone to die and can only exist within that cycle.
Anatolian Vernacular Earthen Housing Architecture Research Presentation
2025
Team
Research Consultant: E. Füsun Alioğlu, Senem Akçay
Coordinator: Dicle Beştaş, Emine Sandal
ReiIllustrated by Emine Sandal
Download the PDF file including the resources: Grounded, Türkiye Pavilion_EN
Tremor
Lamp, motor, custom electronics, dimensions variable
2025
Tremor arises from people’s tendency to observe objects, such as chandeliers and other light fixtures, that sway during minor seismic events to determine whether an earthquake is occurring.
The ceiling-hanging lamp in the exhibition space is activated at specific times by a motorised mechanism to produce a tremor, creating the sensation that the soil – the earth itself – is in constant, unpredictable motion.
These movements are controlled by a microprocessor programmed with the seismic data recorded in Türkiye over the past decade and the probabilities extrapolated from it. They sometimes occur every two minutes and at other times every two hours, serving as a reminder of the Anatolian plate’s dynamic nature and the reality of life within an earthquake zone.
OUT
Uncover.
Transform.
Soil Tower
Karapınar Solar Power Plant SCADA Competition, project presentation
2021
The Soil Tower is based on the concept of building a structure from within its own environmental context. The design placed second in the architectural project competition for the Karapınar Solar Power Plant Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Centre in 2021. It would include a machine and production line to process soil on-site and produce improved compressed-earth blocks. The on-site manufacturing of these blocks would generate materials for the building and create a deepened pit in front of the structure, which would become part of the overall architectural form.
In line with the Grounded narrative, this project, derived from the earth where the tower itself would stand, represents an architectural approach that is both physically and culturally rooted. The Soil Tower is a vision of a utopia that both carries past means of production into the future and shapes the geography.
Muqarnas
Rammed-earth blocks, dimensions variable
2024
Robotic Earth Crafts (REC) is a workshop series that investigates parametric modelling and robotic fabrication for creating earthen building elements, combining high-tech and low-tech approaches. Material explorations merge archaic, alchemical traditions with interdisciplinary science, while architecture students engage with ecological principles and permaculture design, highlighting the significance of local materials and circular design thinking.
A key aspect of the workshop was developing a parametric model for muqarnas-inspired systems with non-planar geometric transitions. The material recipes included clayey earth, gypsum, lime, water and additives such as calcite powder. Through an iterative process, participants tested various rammed-earth mixtures, a material historically valued for its sustainability and adaptability. Foam moulds, precision cut by a robotic arm using a hot-wire technique, ensured accuracy for complex geometries. These molds were designed to eliminate sharp edges and optimize block weight for structural integrity.
İğneada Permaculture and Ecotourism Project
2024
The design of the dome in this project incorporates materials and construction methods characteristic of traditional Anatolian architecture, emphasizing the circular forms found in nature and utilising entirely natural materials.
PROJECT TEAM
Architect: Özgül Öztürk Circular Design
Project Team: Buket Yılmaz, Abdülkadir Özdemir
Assistant Architects: Aysel Yılmaz, Mihriban Damla Şişman
Application Team: Rudus Restoration
Nevterra House
3D-printed terra cotta, scale model
2021
The microhome design featured in the exhibition is inspired by Cappadocia’s thousands of years of cultural heritage and millions of years of geological formations. By merging natural materials with modern technologies, the project aims to rediscover soil’s physical and metaphorical strength.
The research explored the use of Khorasan mortar, a historical building material traditionally composed of lime and recycled fired-clay powder. By adopting this ancient technique to 3D printing, its structural potential and printability were investigated. Nevterra shows how the past, present and future converge in the memory of the earth through offering a sustainable living model and a renewed connection between individuals and nature.
Bio-Informed 3D-Printed Masonry
Hybrid digital fabrication with terra cotta: 3D-printing, robotic milling
2025
Tracing the evolution of brick from sun-dried mud structures in ancient Egypt to the vaulted wells of Venice, this project examines the brick not only as a building unit but also as a bearer of cultural memory and adaptive intelligence. This research-driven initiative rethinks the brick in light of today’s environmental challenges and technological progress.
By combining bio-informed design with 3D printing, this study explores how single-layer brick vaults can be built using minimal materials, no binders and less scaffolding. Inspired by the cellular structure of Arabidopsis thaliana – a model organism in plant biology – this project applies stress-distribution principles to architectural forms. The reorganization of microtubules within plant cells serves as a model for optimising load-bearing capacity and material efficiency in brick construction.
Yelda Gin: Fabricating the 21st Century Earthen Architecture
Throughout her decade-long experience in architecture and large-scale international projects, Yelda Gin became increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of the construction industry, particularly the high carbon emissions associated with materials such as cement and steel. This awareness led to a shift in focus six years ago toward researching natural materials, particularly soil – a clean, low-carbon, reusable and economical building material historically used in architecture. Despite its benefits, soil remains underused in modern practice due to challenges related to production speed, standardization, cost and perception. Gin’s research explores how modern technologies such as digital manufacturing, automation, modular systems and 3D printing could overcome these barriers and help incorporate earthen architecture into mainstream construction.
Download the research papers: Yelda Gin
Atelier FY
Excavated soil is often regarded as waste, but when reshaped, this material can become the building blocks for structures. Atelier FY has created a project to recycle excavated soil, aiming to transform this byproduct into bricks of various sizes for use as construction material. The bricks produced through this system enable a rethinking of the construction process during the design phase and open up possibilities for innovative and inspiring compositions. This technique can be adapted to different soil types, using raw or stabilised mixtures based on project needs.
.jpg)
SuperAdobe Children’s Library
2024
The SuperAdobe Children’s Library was conceived and built through the collective effort of the Herkes İçin Mimarlık (Architecture for All) Association in collaboration with Poçolana Works, following the earthquake disaster of 6 February 2023 in Türkiye and Syria. The project explores earth as a medium of memory, resilience and renewal, embodying the ethos of the exhibition by treating earth as a living archive and a foundation for future architectural practices.
At the core of this project is the SuperAdobe building technique, demonstrating how earth can be reimagined as a source of both physical and emotional security. Local earth was used to construct thick, durable, monolithic structures. The circular forms evoke a primal sense of shelter and protection, while the earthy textures foster a deep connection with nature. The structure consists of two interconnected domes, symbolising the cycles of day and night. The library bridges past experiences with future aspirations through its tactile surfaces and calming spaces, highlighting the earth’s ability to nurture and protect.
OZRUH
Produced by Kiosk, Gizem Elçi A., 2025. 4.16”
Atelier FY
Produced by Letisya Tapan, 2025. 4.40”
The Anatolian Angel Project, The İğneada Project
Produced by Özgül Öztürk, 2025. 5”
BIRE-PAN, Common-Action Walls, REC II
Videographic design by Sinem Serap Duran; compiled by Raghad Aljazairi, 2025.
SuperAdobe Children’s Library
Produced by Herkes için Mimarlık & Poçolana Works, 2025. 3.35”
Karapınar Solar Power Plant SCADA Competition (2021)
Produced by Yalın Architects. 2.58”
Book page: https://turkiyepavilion25.iksv.org/en/book
Common-Action Walls (CAW)
Rammed-earth blocks, dimensions variable
2017
CAW is a prototype wall built from prefabricated earthen blocks. It is designed as a vertical garden with continuous voids and hidden pockets for growing herbs. Created for the IV International Architecture Biennial of Antalya (JABA) 2017 at Karaalioğlu Park, it merges traditional rammed-earth methods with digital technologies.
The project tackles the challenge of creating large voids within a load-bearing rammed-earth structure. To develop a porous yet structurally stable form, research was conducted on minimal surfaces, leading to the selection of the Gyroid geometry. This innovative shape maintains structural integrity while simplifying production, as the entire wall was made using a single mould. This prefabricated wall, designed with digital modeling techniques and modern casting technologies, demonstrates sustainability through its on-site craftsmanship and lifecycle.
Reclaiming soil as a material of the future, the ReYard House demonstrates how ancient building knowledge can be merged with contemporary technologies to address today’s environmental and economic challenges. Designed by Team Bosphorus – a multidisciplinary group from Istanbul Technical University and Yıldız Technical University – ReYard House, winner of five awards, was created for the Solar Decathlon Africa 2019 and constructed in just twenty-one days in Ben Guerir, Morocco.
Referencing Ruhi Kafescioğlu’s Alker method, which combines soil with gypsum, lime and water, the team developed prefabricated, modular earthen sandwich panels within a wooden frame. These bioclimatic panels are optimised for local climate conditions, allowing for breathability, thermal insulation and natural moisture transfer – all without the need for additional coatings.
ReYard House shows how earth, reimagined through industrial fabrication and sustainable design, can offer affordable, efficient and beautiful housing solutions – pointing to a future where soil reclaims its rightful place in architectural innovation.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Biologically Improved Precast Rammed-Earth Panels & Blocks
Dimensions variable
2023
BIRE-PAN is a collaborative research project led by the Departments of Architecture, Bioengineering and Civil Engineering at Istanbul Bilgi University. Running from November 2020 to October 2023, the project aims to promote sustainable urban development by integrating earthen architecture into contemporary construction.
While many factory-produced earthen materials rely on cement-based stabilizers that undermine health and sustainability, this project prioritised biological additives to align with ecological principles. Interdisciplinary research investigated the use of plant-based components and bacteria in earthen mixtures, evaluating their effects on structural strength, water resistance, crack prevention and weight reduction.
By standardising the material recipe with agricultural waste suitable for serial production BIRE-PAN established a digital design-production system for precast components. This system expands design possibilities, enabling mass customization. It enables a deeper exploration of form and pattern while enhancing the design process.
Anti-Ruin
Binder jet 3D-printing with waste stone dust & quartz sand,
260 cm × 240 cm × 245 cm
2025
Anti-Ruin welcomes entropy, transformation and uncertainty as fundamental forces in design. Instead of resisting change, this project advocates for architecture that flourishes in its presence. The project features a modular system with unique, interconnected components, ensuring stability as designs evolve.
Utilising high-resolution 3D printing and inspired by geology, Anti-Ruin blends rhythmic geometries with digitally simulated erosion and repurposes leftover stone dust, incorporating construction waste into its building process to minimise environmental impact. Drawing from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s antifragility, it views architecture as an adaptable and resilient system energised by change.
Photos: Fatih Yılmaz
