Zemla. The Essence
Type of project: Installation art
Location: Moscow
Project date: 2025
Area: 45 sqm
Architect: Buro Zemla
Photographer: Mikhail Kozlov
Location: Moscow
Project date: 2025
Area: 45 sqm
Architect: Buro Zemla
Photographer: Mikhail Kozlov
In Russian, the word Zemla has several fundamental meanings: Earth, Land, Ground, Soil. The names of the office and this project is based on all of them at once.
Hierotopian project dedicated to the first anniversary of the Zemla Buro, tells about its philosophy. The office of the bureau turned into an installation: a portal for communication with the Zemla and a space for thinking about their role in our lives.
Everyone has a connection to the Zemla: tactile, emotional, spiritual. We are attached to them, although we often do not realize why. Earth is home to us and all organisms, soil or land, a place of memory or a matter of rebirth. They link past, present and future: housing memories and mental maps.
To tell this story, the white, almost sterile space of the architectural office was transformed into a chthonic sacral cocoon with a contrast of natural and artificial matter: black plastic wrap and branches of apple trees after pruning the fruit orchard. Furniture and decorative elements in black matter have become hints of objects and have lost their aesthetic expressiveness: only functionality remains. The only white element in the space is the meeting room: a place for temporary exit from the cocoon and sobering up.
Hierotopian project dedicated to the first anniversary of the Zemla Buro, tells about its philosophy. The office of the bureau turned into an installation: a portal for communication with the Zemla and a space for thinking about their role in our lives.
Everyone has a connection to the Zemla: tactile, emotional, spiritual. We are attached to them, although we often do not realize why. Earth is home to us and all organisms, soil or land, a place of memory or a matter of rebirth. They link past, present and future: housing memories and mental maps.
To tell this story, the white, almost sterile space of the architectural office was transformed into a chthonic sacral cocoon with a contrast of natural and artificial matter: black plastic wrap and branches of apple trees after pruning the fruit orchard. Furniture and decorative elements in black matter have become hints of objects and have lost their aesthetic expressiveness: only functionality remains. The only white element in the space is the meeting room: a place for temporary exit from the cocoon and sobering up.
