Soil Pools is a landscape intervention and a composition of soil structures that takes place in St Andrews Botanical Garden, between soil and water, redefining new topographies of moisture that provide a habitat for previously absent species of Fife flora.

The project explores impact printing as a novel fabrication technique that allows precise control of soil units for assembly into larger built structures. Our project explores how to integrate binders, biofilms and roots within earthen structures to provide both structural and biological support to the soil. This renders it a viable construction material that would double as a healthy source of nutrients for the surrounding environment when degrading itself and returning to the land.

The project capitalises on locally available material to generate carvings and additive structures, softening the physical and biological boundaries between the dry grounds and the adjacent river. The excavations are limited and acknowledge the surrounding ecosystems to remain as environmentally benign as possible.