Fall 2026 Lecture Series: Rebecca Choi

Lecture Title: Soil that Remains

Earth architecture, as the late twentieth century named it, took earth for a vernacular material. The 1981 Pompidou exhibition Des Architectures de Terre called that authentic. Before architecture classified soil as vernacular or sustainable and called it earth, soil in West Africa already held a history of taking. The sugar plantations of the Caribbean were a core part of early transatlantic wealth creation, their soils bound to West Africa by the slave trade. In Gwollu, in Ghana, defense walls were raised from the laterite of the Sahel against slave raids. Once soil was named authentic earth, extraction and resistance were difficult to see. This lecture examines how soil was categorized as vernacular, claimed as earth, and designated materiality and environment as the primary way architecture would know the ground.

Rebecca Choi

Assistant Professor

Tulane University