Terra Mater Trilogy: Three buildings exploring the unseen world

Netherlands-based firm Open Platform for Architecture (OPA) is breaking conventions by building into the earth, rather than above it. To date, OPA has already conceived of three promising underground designs – The Plinth, The Holy Cross and Casa Brutale – collectively named the Terra Matter Trilogy.

Courtesy OPA

Architect Laertis Vassiliou, founder of Open Platform for Architecture (OPA) and LAAV Architects, developed this concept design, Casa Brutale. Images of the house built into a cliff went viral online. It will eventually be built in Lebanon.

Courtesy OPA

Vassiliou is interested in exploring ways to build underground.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

"For 3 months after we released this project, we were only replying emails. We worked really hard with the press," says Vassiliou, of his firm's Casa Brutale design.

Courtesy OPA

The project, expected to be completed in 2018, is being constructed in Beirut, Lebanon in collaboration with British consulting firm ARUP.

Courtesy OPA

Casa Brutale will be located 5249 ft (1600 m) above sea level on Faqra mountain outside Beirut, Lebanon. "The site is between two mountains and the clouds form inside the valley. So you will be swimming, looking at clouds," says Vassiliou.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

The Plinth, OPA's submission for the architectural competition to build The Bamiyan Cultural Centre in Afghanistan, is the first chapter of the firm's Terra Mater Trilogy.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

According to Vassiliou, the title The Plinth is a cultural metaphor. "This building is not only a cultural center but also an archive of history of the Bamiyan Valley."

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

The Terra Mater Trilogy consists of three designs: The Plinth, The Holy Cross and Casa Brutale.

Razvan Marescu/OPA Open Platform for Architecture

Lux Aeterna Holy Cross Chapel was designed in 2015 and proposed to be located on the island of Serifos, facing the Aegean sea.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

Constructed with simple materials of wood, glass, and concrete, the church conveys the architect's message of purity.

OPA Open Platform Architecture

The shape of the building is that of an extruded cross.

OPA Open Platform Architecture

At night, the cross structure illuminates from inside the earth and functions like a light house. "This is how true belief should be. It should come from the inside, not from the outside," says the architect.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

The chapel's glass window allows for light to shine through.

OPA Open Platform for Architecture

This bright concrete building is an homage to Le Corbusier's "Ronchamp" church and Tadao Ando's "Church of Light," two of Vassiliou's favorite architects.

LAAV Architects

Villa Clessidra is Vassiliou's newest project above ground. This 3-level cubic house is made of a steel frame and bare concrete that accentuates the use of glass, water, and mirrors in the middle. "I like simple things and honest materials like light and water. I like reflections."

LAAV Architects

The project gained the name Clessidra, Italian for hourglass, from its resemblance to the structure of an hourglass, and to represent a place where time stops.

LAAV Architects

Vassiliou placed the building in an imaginary pine forest in the Dutch dunes to create a place for relaxation and meditation.

LAAV Architects

As much as he enjoyed the exciting ride of designing the series of underground architecture, his next move is to steer away from the ground. "I admire architects who don't repeat themselves. I don't want to have one signature style."

Architect Rasem Kamal

Wadi Rum Excavated Sanctuaries was Switzerland-based architect Rasem Kamal's thesis project at the Rice School of Architecture in 2015.

Architect Rasem Kamal

Wadi Rum, a vast empty desert located in south of Jordan, was declared a world protected site by UNESCO in 2011. Its topography allowed the architect to excavate natural ground with a high flexibility of horizontal expansion.

Architect Rasem Kamal

Kamal was inspired by the nests of ant colonies or formicary, an interconnected layout of family chambers underground.

Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST

A team of architects, headed by Bjarke Ingels and David Zahle, placed the design of the Danish National Maritime Museum underground to preserve the 60-year-old dock walls, creating an open view for visitors.

Rasmus Hjortshøj - COAST

The sloping zig-zag bridges allow visitors to navigate within and around the dock, 23 ft (7 meters) below the ground.

Bunker Arquitectura

The Earthscraper, a concept designed by BNKR Arquitectura, is another example of underground architecture. The inverted skyscraper is to be located in the Zocalo, the 190,000 square-foot historic square of Mexico City.

Bunker Arquitectura

Plunging 984 ft (300 m) into the ground, the 65-story glass and steel pyramid will have a mix of office and residential spaces.

Bunker Arquitectura

A central void allows for a generous amount of natural light and ventilation into the structure, and layers of "earth lobbies" made of plants and trees are designed to improve air quality.

Vincent Callebaut

Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has revealed ambitious plans for a series of underwater eco-villages.

Vincent Callebaut

The Aequorea, housing a variety of facilities including a living space and sports fields, farms across 250 floors and reach a depth of up to 3,280 ft (1,000 m).

Vincent Callebaut

The self-sufficient 'oceanscraper,' constructed using recycled plastics, can host up to 20,000 people in the future.

NL Architects and Young Joon Kim/photo by Kim Jong Oh

Loop House, built in Heiry Art Valley in South Korea, is a single layered house with a continuous floor wrapped around a central courtyard.

NL Architects and Young Joon Kim/photo by Kim Jong O

While the architects' original plan was to build a bungalow with garden, they had to push down part of the house to comply with zoning regulations.

PLP Architecture

CarTube, designed by London-based PLP Architecture, combines electric cars and mass transit into an underground road system. Automated cars would be controlled to travel at a steady speed, which could reduce travel time by 75%.

PLP Architecture

According to Lars Hesselgren, director of research at PLP, "CarTube has the potential to be the next best thing to teleportation and will revolutionize exiting cities and allow for unprecedented urban forms."

The Plinth was designed to be a cultural center in Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan as part of a competition. The Holy Cross, if built, would be a place of worship. The third vision, Casa Brutale, was commissioned after images for the house wedged into a cliff, went viral online. It will eventually be located in Lebanon.

So, what’s the attraction of life underground? CNN Style speaks to Laertis Vassiliou, cofounder of OPA, about the future of architecture.

CNN: Architects these days are exploring more diverse landscape opportunities, designing for example, projects located underwater, in the forest, in the air, and so on. What inspired you to go underground?

Vassiliou: Underground architecture has been around since the medieval times, and longer. People lived in caves, and dug holes to build houses. It’s not something new. I wrote a thesis on underground buildings and their past at the National Technical Institute of Athens in 2006.

But that [the thesis] is what got me interested in what was still unexplored when building underground, and the right opportunity came with the Bamiyan Cultural Center in Afghanistan. I wanted go back to the roots, back to earth to see what happens. So I went down and placed the building inside the earth instead of above it.

CNN: What are the benefits of living underground?

Vassiliou: There are many benefits, although I believe that we still cannot exploit it fully. There are benefits of earth’s thermal insulation, and you can also be protected from harmful environmental issues like UV [ultraviolet waves].

It is very safe, unless you are in a very seismic continent. There is also the negative perception that people already have of this underground world and the darkness that comes with it, so there’s functional benefits versus psychology.

CNN: Living underground often has a dark and eerie connotation. What elements did you put in in your design to make these underground structures more appealing?

Vassiliou: People hate underground architecture because humans are meant to live on earth, not inside earth. My ambition through this trilogy was to reconsider underground architecture and make people love it.

For Casa Brutale, I put a large façade towards the stunning view and the light reflecting onto the pool water creates an aquarium-like feeling. Enough playful light makes it more atmospheric and transcendental.

CNN: Was the chapel of the Holy Cross harder to design than the other two because you had to consider religious elements? What religious design elements did you include?

Vassiliou: Mainly it’s the cross. The cross as a typology or as a shape has been a very popular shape in designing churches, but making a façade and organizing the space into an extruded cross was very challenging. I also built religious iconography into the concrete, but the whole space is pure and is just focused on the atmosphere.

CNN: Your second underground project, Casa Brutale, became an internet sensation. And the project will eventually be built. What’s the latest on this?

Vassiliou: It’s been a very exciting ride but I could never say that it’s been a smooth journey. We worked really hard with the press because for the idea to come true, ideally it’d have to become an internet sensation. So I told my design team, ‘If Kim Kardashian can break the internet with a picture of her butt, we can do it with some interesting architecture, too.’ Since then, we’ve had a lot of new projects and clients and it’s going well.

CNN: Were your renderings and the surrounding landscape based on an actual place on earth, or did you just picture a cliff when you conceived of its design?

Vassiliou: I pictured breathtaking cliffs by the Aegean sea, and Greek islands in the Cyclades. Folegandros and Serifos are the actual places where I rendered. They are very beautiful places with or without my building.

CNN: How do you think this project will impact people and the contemporary architecture scene? What do you hope to achieve through the Terra Mater Trilogy?

Vassiliou: In architecture, usually a client visits the architect and commissions a project. But I first designed a building that could be placed in some places, and found a client later. That was a big bet for myself, but it worked. People can now work and become known for what they can do, not for what they have done for other people and companies. I’ve seen many interesting projects hitting the internet and it’s awesome that people are going for their inspirations.

CNN: All three projects seem to have Brutalist style characteristics. Why?

Vassiliou: I love concrete. I decided to pay a tribute to Brutalism with the Terra Mater trilogy because it was a very sincere and honest movement and phase of architecture. But I wouldn’t go much further into that. I like modernism, big façades, and minimalism.

CNN: What’s next for OPA?

Vassiliou: I am trying to avoid having a signature architecture. I said no more underground buildings otherwise I’ll get a new nickname – like ‘mole.’ It will be interesting to work on high rise buildings which I am very keen on. I’d like to continue as a minimalist and work with simple, pure, and honest materials like light, water, and reflections.