Soil Habitability
rethinking soil health
[design research] [data-driven design] [MtHD]
September 2024 - January 2025 | Master Thesis, TU Eindhoven
Exhibition setup at Microstad, Eindhoven
Earthworms speak. Data listens. Soil Habitability is an ongoing project exploring how design might attune us to the worlds beneath our feet. By centering earthworms—key inhabitants and shapers of soil—the project challenges the dominance of human and scientific perspectives in defining what healthy soil is.
The work examines how technology can support more nuanced engagements with subterranean life. A custom-built sensory mat detects the subtle movements of earthworms as they navigate soil with different moisture, textures, and nutrient levels. Environmental sensors monitoring temperature and moisture extend this awareness, forming a network that observes how changing conditions influence their behavior. Rather than extracting data to control or optimize nature, the system explores technology as a companion that listens and reveals.
Visitors participate by placing soil samples near the earthworm habitat, observing migration patterns across four soil states: moist soil, dry soil, manure-enriched soil, and chemically fertilized soil. These environments reflect human intervention in agriculture and invite reflection on how our actions reshape the ecosystems we depend on.
The work examines how technology can support more nuanced engagements with subterranean life. A custom-built sensory mat detects the subtle movements of earthworms as they navigate soil with different moisture, textures, and nutrient levels. Environmental sensors monitoring temperature and moisture extend this awareness, forming a network that observes how changing conditions influence their behavior. Rather than extracting data to control or optimize nature, the system explores technology as a companion that listens and reveals.
Visitors participate by placing soil samples near the earthworm habitat, observing migration patterns across four soil states: moist soil, dry soil, manure-enriched soil, and chemically fertilized soil. These environments reflect human intervention in agriculture and invite reflection on how our actions reshape the ecosystems we depend on.
Real-time visualizations and playful, speculative messages emerging from the soil give presence and agency to earthworms positioning them as interpreters of soil habitability.
Through this multispecies encounter, the project asks how design can reframe soil as a living place, co-created through ongoing material transactions among humans, earthworms, and the land. Using technology as a mediator, I hope to create a bridge for interspecies dialogue.
Design research project at Industrial Design master’s program at Eindhoven University of Technology (Supervisor: Bahareh Barati)
Exhibitions
Microstad, Eindhoven
Publication
Samit, D., Funk, M., Barati, B. (in press). Sensing Soil Habitability: Relational Data for Multispecies Attunement. IASDR 2025.
real data of earthworm migration towards moist soil
