Soil Stories

A Working Exhibition On How Material Practices Drive Soil Health

4pm Exhibition Open to Public / 6pm Public Discussion

As the first of Yale School of Architecture’s summer program in Senegal, in partnership with RAW Material Company, the 2024 “Soil Sisters” program explores the complex opportunities and challenges of such material practices in today’s domestic and global material economy. Engaging past, existing and emergent narratives around intersectoral material practices, the working exhibition “Soil Stories” explores connections and establishes relational impacts between the many hands that intersect with material lives including farmers, designers, scientists, community leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and others over time. 

Across global landfill sites, the inability of increasing quantities of material surplus from various sectors to“return to the soil”, has brought into sharp focus the biological incompatibility between today’s overground material practices and their impact on soil health. In response to this, “Soil Sisters” is a long-term research area at the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture focused on how cross-sectoral material practices can ensure soil nutrition and soil resiliency using biodiverse, non-toxic and low energy approaches.

“Soil Stories” explores building, agricultural, salt mining, textile and plastic products not solely as a problem or solution, but instead places them in context of meaningful narratives and complex practices in Senegal and beyond. At 6pm on Friday, June 14th, a public discussion will explore with partners new criteria for material development, reestablish ties between material communities,  link both traditional and emerging sources of knowledge and entrepreneurial activity as well as reimagine interconnected material futures centred on soil health. 

Yale School of Architecture Faculty 
Mae-ling Lokko, Yale School of Architecture