Time and structure; expectation and construction; landscape and architecture; history and myth.The foundation is a joint which carries extraordinary potential to speak of the cultures that built it. This text tells stories about three cultures whose identities are interwoven with their foundation-building.Tracing a path among the distinct ways in which they found, it values the foundation as a marker between anticipating and making in the architectural process; an ambiguous joint between land and building; an invisible structure of the surfaces we touch; and an indicator of an attitude towards time. The narrative begins in Rome and concludes in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Canada.Both indigenous cultures represent extremes in notions of ;;foundation’: Rome’s tufa block substructures have borne buildings stratified over millennia; while the subarctic Omushkego Cree have traditionally had no permanent foundations, their building traces perceived in subtle differences of soil composition.A third base in the Netherlands is both a fulcrum and foil, as the nation’s diverse local and large-scale strategies negotiate heavy and light building traditions, and offer another distinct set of considerations in preparing ground. The aim of this book is two-fold.Firstly, it is to restore the foundation to the purview of the architect.Groundwork is more than a technical puzzle: it is also a deeply imaginative act.Secondly, this text seeks to understand why cultures found the way they do, and to give consideration to the unique inheritances offered by diverse foundation-building traditions.
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