underground: The Latest Architecture and News

A GEO and HAAU collaboration, led by the 2025 Planetary Transitions Artists in Residence Sam Spurr, Eduardo Kairuz, and Angela Lee
Invited guest: Daniel Barber, Professor of Architecture at the Technical University of Eindhoven

Beneath the visible surface of cities lies an invisible architecture. Subways, tunnels, water systems, data cables, and bunkers form a dense network that sustains urban life while remaining largely unseen. The ground beneath our feet is not a void but a complex territory that holds the infrastructures, memories, and anxieties of our age. In recent years, as land becomes scarce and climate pressures intensify, architects and urbanists have turned their gaze downward, rediscovering the subterranean as both a physical and conceptual frontier. To design underground is to engage with the unseen mechanisms that shape the world above.

The subterranean has long been a site where architecture intersects with politics, technology, and belief. From the catacombs of Rome to the industrial subways of modernity, descent has symbolized both protection and exposure. Twentieth-century urbanism transformed this gesture into a system: metros, shelters, and utilities redefined the city section as an instrument of governance. Beneath the promise of efficiency and progress, the underground absorbed the anxieties of an era of war, surveillance, and collapse. Its evolution reveals not only how societies build, but also how they fear.

Today, the ground has become the new frontier of urban expansion and ecological adaptation. As digital infrastructures, energy systems, and climatic buffers migrate below grade, architecture confronts a space both technical and metaphysical — essential yet marginal, invisible yet decisive. To think in sections rather than in plan is to recognise that contemporary cities no longer exist solely in their skylines but also in their depths. The challenge for architecture is not only to occupy that space, but to render it legible, to turn the unseen into knowledge, and the hidden into a new terrain of design.

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Cobe Architects has just unveiled its winning design for the future Danish Parliament in Copenhagen. Aiming to revitalize Denmark’s historic administrative center, the studio envisioned an inviting, accessible space, “where everyone can experience democracy up close.” The design features an underground visitor center, leading to facilities within the Parliament Courtyard, and an interconnected pathway uniting historic buildings formerly used by the Danish National Archive.

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Videos

The Media Architecture Biennale 2023 (MAB23) takes place June 14-15 (online) and June 21-23 (in-person) in Toronto, Canada. The event, which features keynotes, roundtables, and awards, aims to offer a platform for communities of research and practice concerned with media and the built environment. MAB23 will bring together students, academics, and professionals from architecture, art, design, urban planning, media and communication, urban informatics, and public policy to share new ideas and shape this evolving field.

Grimshaw has been commissioned to develop the busiest transport hub in the UK, as well as London's surrounding Southbank area. The master plan will improve the traffic of 5 connections and renovate the terrain, home to world-famous attractions like the London Eye and the Tate Modern. The project is aligned with Lambeth Council's and the Network Rail's commitment to net zero emissions by 2030, through the extension of pedestrian and cycling routes.