Cultivating the City, or The Lessons from the Worm

Team Point of View

Nowadays the soil is mainly a surface on which the City lies and is no longer considered as an active resource for urban metabolism.
The Somme administrative department has been shaped by its geological conditions. Topography, hydrology and soils have influenced regional morphology and development.
Based on lessons from the worm, the project aims at bringing the soil back at the core of urban territory.
It reconnects social, economic and ecological productivity in order to provide not only electricity and heat, but also calories and knowledge.
The project focuses on simple, biologically oriented interventions. It is a regenerative infrastructure using the tools of the worm: perforate, link, diversify, re-scale and infiltrate.
The soil project is not a master plan but a long-term process based on experimentation.

Jury Point of View

A proposal that is, in terms of strategy and method, rich and innovative on several scales. Based on the principle of soil regeneration, the team’s proposal is doubly relevant ecologically and economically. The proposed concept of development, the “earthworm strategy”, is enriched by the sensitivity of a project that pays attention to nature and the landscape, based on the qualities and resources of the site. It responds to the competition theme with a particular radicalness.