Architectural Design Studio 6: Option Studio – ARC4018
Beyond Earthworks
The term earthworks coined by the American artist Robert Smithson describes an art movement in which conceptual thinking, landscape and earth moving are intertwined. The artist manipulates natural materials - soil rock, boulders, logs, leaves and water. Perhaps man-made materials such as concrete, metal or asphalt are added. These site-specific land art pieces shook the world when they were first realized in the late 1960’s and they still resonate and have profoundly reshaped the allied discipline of architecture.
Earthwork, as a movement generated by artists has forced a rethinking of the boundaries between architecture and landscape and art. Land art like architecture is bound to site and establishes a relationship to its larger surroundings. The boundaries between the art object and its setting is not clear at all. Earthwork art works are not discrete objects, intended for isolated appraisal, but fully engaged elements embedded in a specific landscape.