Rithinking soil design, starting from the body

The “Project of the Soil” concept belongs to a season during which numerous European town planning design traditions converged in an attempt to develop a different project for the late twentieth-century city. A project more focused on the space we walk or live in and its characteristics; the goal was to contrast mere technicism on the one hand, and the paternalism of a town planning approach aimed at turning individuals into actors aware of what was good for them; an approach that presumed to educate, guide, and dictate behaviour. The concept proposed by Bernardo Secchi in 1986 became immediately popular. The current season is different. But the gambit is the same. Once again, it involves prefiguring a (different) town planning project, starting with the soil. Continuity, porosity, and rugosity are replaced by the broad, living, profound nature of the soil. The two seasons share a secular nature insofar as they consider soil as both a natural and artificial state, the outcome of social processes triggered by multiple actors. What separates them is the shadow of the Anthropocene reflecting all our feelings of guilt. This paper will input into a new collective development of the soil and its project, based on the body regarded as a channel of transmission between two terms.