Sean Keeley

LIMINAL: Subterranean Praxis

My thesis proposes a subterranean rammed earth home that functions as both a livable space and a conceptual artwork, blurring boundaries between architecture, landscape, and land art. Embedded within the earth, the dwelling draws from the site’s materiality, employing rammed earth construction, natural ventilation, and passive lighting to create a climatically responsive, ecological habitat. Motivated by Alison and Peter Smithson’s New Brutalism, the design emphasizes raw, honest materials and functional expression, while its concealed presence challenges ideas of visibility, permanence, and architecture’s relationship to land. Found and salvaged objects: reused water tanks, metal piping, industrial debris, carry histories into the fabric. Drawing on Robert Smithson’s non-sites, materials are displaced into gallery setting, fostering dialogue between site and non-site, presence and absence. Accompanied by film photography documenting process and landscape, the project resists polished visualization, reimagining the home as a critical, embedded artifact questioning where architecture ends and land begins.