and water pollution, water shortages, desperate overcrowding, a disappearing countryside, exhausted soils, and vast famines, man is forced to reappraise many long unquestioned ideas about his relation to the life-giving earth.
Out of this reappraisal whole new professions are evolving. Today, the growing importance of city planning, demography, soil, water, and wildlife conservation, and the overall science of ecology attest to man’s new awareness of the land crisis and his disappearing natural heritage.
Underground architecture for the purpose of conservation is but one expression of this new land ethic. Buildings already planned for construction in many parts of the United States will use the new practice of re-establishing balanced, natural-type soils above a man-made structure. Then, plant materials selected for both natural beauty and appropriateness to their region will be established on the roofs of the structures so that in the shortest possible number of years, thriving little biotic communities requiring no human maintenance will start to reappear. Future forests.
Underground architecture, though but one of many far-reaching conservation practices, promises measurable relief in many areas. In the Cherry Hill (Greater Philadelphia) area, for instance, a forty-five- inch annual rainfall amounts to over one million gallons of rainfall per acre each year. Obviously, then, for each acre made impervious by conventional construction (blacktop and roofing materials), over one million gallons of life- giving rain water are wasted each year, sent coursing down streams never intended to accommodate such surges, eroding banks, destroying plants and animal habitats, and finally carrying to the ocean rich topsoils, mineral nutrients, and bacteria that were built up on the land during those long centuries before modern man learned to pave. Underground architecture can prevent such damage by keeping its paved surfaces hidden from the rain. With a young forest to catch it, most of the rainfall on such structures will be held by the foliage and the deep humus layers, some of the water to be used by the plants and animals on the site, and the rest piped directly to the underground reserves now being robbed by conventional construction practices. But not all underground structures need have forests above them. In the West, where drier conditions prevail, hardy natural grasses and wildflowers can adorn such buildings just as they once adorned the prairies themselves. Parks, farms, meadows, and recreational areas can be established above these new buildings. A shopping center designed for the Philadelphia area, for instance, will have an 18-hole golf course above its skylighted stores and parking lots.
Further, underground architecture offers us many immediate, practical advantages. Because of the earth’s rather constant fifty-five-degree underground temperature (measurable in caves throughout the world), very little heating and even less air conditioning will be required in such buildings. This, plus almost no need for outside maintenance, snow removal, or lawn sprinklers, add up to considerable savings. In addition such intangibles as isolation from both outside noises and atmospheric radioactivity offer further incentives to build this way. The prospect that we may once more find the great green out-of-doors at our doorsteps makes hoped-for increases in leisure time seem even more appealing.
But the words “underground architecture” often tend to repel the people who hear them. Having been exposed too many times to the depressing look of our subways and highway tunnels, or to leaky basements and cold, damp caves, people tend to view the real advantages of this new architecture with great skepticism. Most people will agree that such land-wasters as parking lots could go below ground. And many will even concede that some of our freeways, shopping centers —even our factories and offices — belong there too (in addition to railroad yards, refineries, and museums). But the thought of living underground in a windowless, artificial environment is to them the ultimate perversion of man’s role on earth.
Man, they say, was meant to live in the sun and air, to be involved in the seasons, to know night and day. Fortunately, most advocates of this new architecture heartily agree.
When architects propose windowless, wholly underground buildings, they are not planning housing.
Wonderful underground houses have been designed that always open onto sunny, sunken courtyards or project from the sides of hills in order that their rooms can be adequately day-lighted. Such underground buildings will be perfectly dry, and by natural methods will tend to keep the humidity level in the healthful forty to fifty percent range.
Whether or not underground architecture will ever be applied to the downtown areas of our large cities, the fact remains that it has definite application everywhere else. It offers hope that the great, blighted areas around our cities and along our highways may someday become green and beautiful again.
But underground architecture is no cure-all. It is only one way—one legitimate way —of bowing to the great life cycle we’re so quickly destroying. Though it has been endorsed by many ecologists and landscape architects, the idea has drawn fire from some who misunderstand it, who fear that it will result in a kind of non-architecture. Regardless, the idea is gaining in popularity each day as more and more people begin to wonder about the blight they see all around them.
Until now, man has always gone underground only for selfish reasons — security, bomb-proofing, or the novelty of dialing his own lighting and “weather” effects. If he continues to build for such reasons he may well create underground structures as ugly and as destructive as those above ground, but if he can find a new respect for the miracle of life—for all of the myraid life forms to which he is related-he may produce an architecture that his descendants will treasure …
Edith returned when he was barely halfway through, but took a chair and remained silent, sipping her beer.
He looked up finally and gestured with the pamphlet. “I don’t know. I suppose it makes sense. It just comes as a surprise. How many houses are there like this in Hopewell?”
“But where are your stores, your community buildings, your car pool? Or bars, restaurants? And don’t you have any sports facilities in a town this big? Swimming pool, tennis courts?”
“They’re all underground too, built into the hillsides, sunk below the surface. To the extent possible, we try to avoid any view of man’s work. This is the manner in which most people live in America now. In small communities, in areas of beauty, but where modern agriculture isn’t very practical. Oh, we have fruit orchards here and there, and the machines come out at night and tend them and harvest them in season; but basically this is residential area.”
He shook his head. “I’ll have another drink. A stiffer one this time,” he said, coming to his feet.
