T.H. Kang
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1
Soil at the End of the Forest
Soil Construction after Wildfire for Unfolding of the Latent Commons
This thesis begins from the fragile intersection of depleted soil, burned forests, and post-wildfire life, asking how architecture can make visible the vulnerability of dwelling and the structural contradictions of forest management produced by monocultural forestry, anthropogenic regimes, and the singular logic of capitalism, and how these conditions might be transformed into an existential alternative of coexistence. In this context, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s “latent commons”(2015) serves as a framework for reading the wide gap between survival and presence, while this framework is spatially articulated through architectural methods of “material redistribution through soil weathering” and “non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal between humans and non-humans.”
This thesis first emerges through a contradiction in rammed earth construction: soil becomes a stable, fire-resistant building material only after much of its organic matter and biological life has been removed. What first appeared as a technical condition opened into a question that is at once architectural and ecological — if there is such a thing as dead soil, what does it mean for soil to come alive again? Following this question through ash, charcoal, excavated soil, wildfire, pine mushroom forests, and post-disaster reconstruction, the research asks how architecture can make visible the nodes of multispecies world-making that arise within a wildfire-damaged forest landscape.
The work is situated in Yeongdeok, South Korea, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfire, where the maintenance of pine forests for matsutake production and the expansion of fire-resistant broadleaf forests pull the same landscape in incompatible directions. This conflict is not treated as a simple opposition between residents’ livelihoods and ecological restoration. Rather, it is understood as a condition produced by policies and compensation systems that have tied rural income to a single tree species, while leaving forest-dependent lives exposed to fire, landslide, and post-disaster uncertainty. Instead of resolving this conflict into a fixed answer, the project treats it as the material it works with.
Through cartographic and patchwork readings of the site, on-site interviews and a workshop with residents, local architects, and county officials, and a 1:10 model built from actual soil and subjected to simulated weathering, the research develops a system of water tanks, retaining walls, an energy tower, collective housing, a greenhouse, and nutrient rammed earth blocks. Together, these elements rearrange post-wildfire material flows into spatial devices of occupation, decomposition, maintenance, and release. Soil weathering becomes a means of material redistribution, while the boundary between human and non-human actors is articulated through a non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal.
The central proposition is that architecture need not be understood only through permanence and protection. Here, controlled material transformation — weathering, erosion, partial collapse, nutrient release — is treated as an active medium of design, organised through a clear distinction between a stable structural core and a weathering sacrificial layer, so that decay is planned rather than merely suffered. Maintenance and withdrawal become architectural acts, and coexistence is understood not as harmony but as an ongoing negotiation among human and non-human actors. The thesis does not claim a completed ecological solution; it offers an architectural proposal and a monitoring framework, arguing that the ethical task of building in such a condition is to make visible not only the costs of coexistence, but also the larger political, economic, and ecological structures that placed these residents in so precarious a position.
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This thesis first emerges through a contradiction in rammed earth construction: soil becomes a stable, fire-resistant building material only after much of its organic matter and biological life has been removed. What first appeared as a technical condition opened into a question that is at once architectural and ecological — if there is such a thing as dead soil, what does it mean for soil to come alive again? Following this question through ash, charcoal, excavated soil, wildfire, pine mushroom forests, and post-disaster reconstruction, the research asks how architecture can make visible the nodes of multispecies world-making that arise within a wildfire-damaged forest landscape.
The work is situated in Yeongdeok, South Korea, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfire, where the maintenance of pine forests for matsutake production and the expansion of fire-resistant broadleaf forests pull the same landscape in incompatible directions. This conflict is not treated as a simple opposition between residents’ livelihoods and ecological restoration. Rather, it is understood as a condition produced by policies and compensation systems that have tied rural income to a single tree species, while leaving forest-dependent lives exposed to fire, landslide, and post-disaster uncertainty. Instead of resolving this conflict into a fixed answer, the project treats it as the material it works with.
Through cartographic and patchwork readings of the site, on-site interviews and a workshop with residents, local architects, and county officials, and a 1:10 model built from actual soil and subjected to simulated weathering, the research develops a system of water tanks, retaining walls, an energy tower, collective housing, a greenhouse, and nutrient rammed earth blocks. Together, these elements rearrange post-wildfire material flows into spatial devices of occupation, decomposition, maintenance, and release. Soil weathering becomes a means of material redistribution, while the boundary between human and non-human actors is articulated through a non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal.
The central proposition is that architecture need not be understood only through permanence and protection. Here, controlled material transformation — weathering, erosion, partial collapse, nutrient release — is treated as an active medium of design, organised through a clear distinction between a stable structural core and a weathering sacrificial layer, so that decay is planned rather than merely suffered. Maintenance and withdrawal become architectural acts, and coexistence is understood not as harmony but as an ongoing negotiation among human and non-human actors. The thesis does not claim a completed ecological solution; it offers an architectural proposal and a monitoring framework, arguing that the ethical task of building in such a condition is to make visible not only the costs of coexistence, but also the larger political, economic, and ecological structures that placed these residents in so precarious a position.
...
This thesis begins from the fragile intersection of depleted soil, burned forests, and post-wildfire life, asking how architecture can make visible the vulnerability of dwelling and the structural contradictions of forest management produced by monocultural forestry, anthropogenic regimes, and the singular logic of capitalism, and how these conditions might be transformed into an existential alternative of coexistence. In this context, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s “latent commons”(2015) serves as a framework for reading the wide gap between survival and presence, while this framework is spatially articulated through architectural methods of “material redistribution through soil weathering” and “non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal between humans and non-humans.”
This thesis first emerges through a contradiction in rammed earth construction: soil becomes a stable, fire-resistant building material only after much of its organic matter and biological life has been removed. What first appeared as a technical condition opened into a question that is at once architectural and ecological — if there is such a thing as dead soil, what does it mean for soil to come alive again? Following this question through ash, charcoal, excavated soil, wildfire, pine mushroom forests, and post-disaster reconstruction, the research asks how architecture can make visible the nodes of multispecies world-making that arise within a wildfire-damaged forest landscape.
The work is situated in Yeongdeok, South Korea, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfire, where the maintenance of pine forests for matsutake production and the expansion of fire-resistant broadleaf forests pull the same landscape in incompatible directions. This conflict is not treated as a simple opposition between residents’ livelihoods and ecological restoration. Rather, it is understood as a condition produced by policies and compensation systems that have tied rural income to a single tree species, while leaving forest-dependent lives exposed to fire, landslide, and post-disaster uncertainty. Instead of resolving this conflict into a fixed answer, the project treats it as the material it works with.
Through cartographic and patchwork readings of the site, on-site interviews and a workshop with residents, local architects, and county officials, and a 1:10 model built from actual soil and subjected to simulated weathering, the research develops a system of water tanks, retaining walls, an energy tower, collective housing, a greenhouse, and nutrient rammed earth blocks. Together, these elements rearrange post-wildfire material flows into spatial devices of occupation, decomposition, maintenance, and release. Soil weathering becomes a means of material redistribution, while the boundary between human and non-human actors is articulated through a non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal.
The central proposition is that architecture need not be understood only through permanence and protection. Here, controlled material transformation — weathering, erosion, partial collapse, nutrient release — is treated as an active medium of design, organised through a clear distinction between a stable structural core and a weathering sacrificial layer, so that decay is planned rather than merely suffered. Maintenance and withdrawal become architectural acts, and coexistence is understood not as harmony but as an ongoing negotiation among human and non-human actors. The thesis does not claim a completed ecological solution; it offers an architectural proposal and a monitoring framework, arguing that the ethical task of building in such a condition is to make visible not only the costs of coexistence, but also the larger political, economic, and ecological structures that placed these residents in so precarious a position.
This thesis first emerges through a contradiction in rammed earth construction: soil becomes a stable, fire-resistant building material only after much of its organic matter and biological life has been removed. What first appeared as a technical condition opened into a question that is at once architectural and ecological — if there is such a thing as dead soil, what does it mean for soil to come alive again? Following this question through ash, charcoal, excavated soil, wildfire, pine mushroom forests, and post-disaster reconstruction, the research asks how architecture can make visible the nodes of multispecies world-making that arise within a wildfire-damaged forest landscape.
The work is situated in Yeongdeok, South Korea, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfire, where the maintenance of pine forests for matsutake production and the expansion of fire-resistant broadleaf forests pull the same landscape in incompatible directions. This conflict is not treated as a simple opposition between residents’ livelihoods and ecological restoration. Rather, it is understood as a condition produced by policies and compensation systems that have tied rural income to a single tree species, while leaving forest-dependent lives exposed to fire, landslide, and post-disaster uncertainty. Instead of resolving this conflict into a fixed answer, the project treats it as the material it works with.
Through cartographic and patchwork readings of the site, on-site interviews and a workshop with residents, local architects, and county officials, and a 1:10 model built from actual soil and subjected to simulated weathering, the research develops a system of water tanks, retaining walls, an energy tower, collective housing, a greenhouse, and nutrient rammed earth blocks. Together, these elements rearrange post-wildfire material flows into spatial devices of occupation, decomposition, maintenance, and release. Soil weathering becomes a means of material redistribution, while the boundary between human and non-human actors is articulated through a non-consensual negotiation of occupation and withdrawal.
The central proposition is that architecture need not be understood only through permanence and protection. Here, controlled material transformation — weathering, erosion, partial collapse, nutrient release — is treated as an active medium of design, organised through a clear distinction between a stable structural core and a weathering sacrificial layer, so that decay is planned rather than merely suffered. Maintenance and withdrawal become architectural acts, and coexistence is understood not as harmony but as an ongoing negotiation among human and non-human actors. The thesis does not claim a completed ecological solution; it offers an architectural proposal and a monitoring framework, arguing that the ethical task of building in such a condition is to make visible not only the costs of coexistence, but also the larger political, economic, and ecological structures that placed these residents in so precarious a position.
On the Placeness That Exists Before Place
Uncovering a Sense of Place through Collective Architectural Practice on the Terp
This thesis explores how shared architectural actions and material engagements contribute to the formation of a communal sense of place, using the Frisian terp landscape as a central case study. Drawing from archaeological evidence, historical maps, and theoretical frameworks from architectural phenomenology and anthropology, the research investigates the interplay between collective practices—such as layered earth construction, settlement rituals, and communal maintenance—and the emergence of place-bound identities. The study argues that the physical shaping of the terp, beyond being a response to environmental necessity, constituted a socio-cultural process through which people actively constructed their worldview. The research contributes to a broader understanding of architecture not merely as shelter but as a medium through which communal imagination and identity are cultivated.
...
This thesis explores how shared architectural actions and material engagements contribute to the formation of a communal sense of place, using the Frisian terp landscape as a central case study. Drawing from archaeological evidence, historical maps, and theoretical frameworks from architectural phenomenology and anthropology, the research investigates the interplay between collective practices—such as layered earth construction, settlement rituals, and communal maintenance—and the emergence of place-bound identities. The study argues that the physical shaping of the terp, beyond being a response to environmental necessity, constituted a socio-cultural process through which people actively constructed their worldview. The research contributes to a broader understanding of architecture not merely as shelter but as a medium through which communal imagination and identity are cultivated.