EARTH and SOIL

keywords: Lava soil, contamination, Oil, Chemicals, Soil Formation

Eerlier desing

fig.1 Lava soil of Curacao

To be honest in my earlier design I never pays many attention to the earth and soil issues. Nevertheless it is a extremely important part of urban planning and architecture. Especially in the Netherlands where we deal with different types of soil. The first time I really take soil and earth in to consideration is on my current project. As mentioned in the wind part of this website my current project is located on the Caribbean Island of Curacao on an Oil Refinery terrain. To be able to propose any development on that location we need to know what type of soil we are dealing with and in how far the soil is contaminated by chemicals and oil. For my Current project I do not have detailed maps but I do have some sketch proposal in order to heal the soil. For that I propose to use plants to heal the soil. Of course the development will take please on a long term because the nature needs some time to do the job.



fig.2, 3 the geology of the Island of Curacao and below the proposal to heal the soil of the refinery by using plants.



Future Design

In order to understand a location it is important to understand the soil your design is going to be planned. For in the future I would like to know and learn more about the geology from the locations I will plan for. I do need to be an geological but I would like to understand what is happening and what type of design are better for which location. Because the Netherlands is flat we often do not have to deal with steep hills and deep valleys. In order to understand the theory of earth and soil Prof. de Jong made excel sheets where we can calculate different aspect on a location concerning the soil. For the future I will use these excel sheets to measure and calculate my location. On the pictures below some fragment of the excel sheets and the book of Earth and Soil from Prof. de Jong.

fig.4 fragment of the book SWELL by Prof. de Jong



fig.5

Calculation of heights in the excel program of Prof. de Jong