In Luxembourg, the fast pace of construction – combined with a long history of mining and material extraction – has left a deep imprint on the environment. While soil extraction in the south of Luxembourg has been common for centuries, it was only in the 19th century, a period of intense industrialisation, development of the railway network, and emerging economic ties with the German (and later also French and Belgian) markets, that mining of iron ore and coal took place on a larger scale. The complex relationship between resource extraction and spatial transformation in the Minett – through mining or urban development – was the outcome of a set of political, economic, and social decisions that linked spatial development closely to the growth of the market economy.
In the Minett, coal was mined within a network of underground passages, with the impact above ground caused mainly by the dumping of industrial waste (rocks, soil, rubble). Iron ore mining on the other hand involved the digging of large open-air mines near the steel mills, which resulted in some of the residual fraction from steel production (called “blast furnace slag”) ending up in this landscape – in large landfills near factories. The construction of impressive industrial infrastructure and technology, embodying the dreams of progress and growth, went hand-in-hand with the construction of invisible hinterlands of polluted soils, damaged ecosystems and toxic “wastelands”, inhabited largely by the very workers of the steel industry themselves.
With the decline of the mining industry from the 1970s onward, these ruined soils were joined by forgotten infrastructures and communities of former steelworkers, thus leaving the entire region in the midst of new markets and frontiers of economic growth. Projects aimed at the development of the former industrial sites followed, with one of the most notable examples being the university campus and the new urban neighbourhood of Belval. These projects, however, largely focused on the immediate economic value of land instead of the slow regeneration of soil, often choosing to remove or seal the polluted earth rather than restore it. Such strategies equally overlooked what it would mean to heal soil as a common and necessary ecosystem for humans and other living beings.
Combustion, smelting and blast furnace operations released clouds of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter. The so-called “red dust” settled on buildings, clothing and bodies, and there was talk of an air that you could literally ”taste in your mouth”. Air thus acted both as a medium of production and as a carrier of harm: respiratory illnesses such as “black lung” – also called “miner’s disease”, disproportionately afflicted the same workers whose labour sustained industrial growth. Simultaneously, the skies of the Minett were part of a transnational atmosphere, which contributed to phenomena such as acid rain during the 1970s and 1980s.
Even after the decline of the steel industry, atmospheric “pressures” persist – dust from the construction sector, traffic emissions and the redevelopment of former industrial sites such as Belval or Terres Rouges continue to generate new kinds of “airs”. Through a strong reliance on private cars, traffic congestion, pollution and noise become the tangible effects of the supposedly “immaterial” air. At the same time, Luxembourg’s booming real estate market has driven constant cycles of demolition and new construction, which contribute to the production of dust and waste. Similarly, the rapid urbanisation of Luxembourg’s territory has led to extensive soil sealing through asphalt, concrete, and other impermeable surfaces. Areas such as Foetz, operating as a commercial zone and characterised by large parking spaces, enhance urban heat islands where sealed surfaces intensify local warming, thus also preventing natural soil breathability, amplifying runoff and air stagnation.
During autumn 2023 and autumn 2025, a group of researchers from the Master in Architecture Programme at the University of Luxembourg held two design studios that explored soil and air as key subjects for urban and architectural research and design. The first studio, titled Worlding Soils: Caring for Soil Communities in Minett, was led by postdoctoral researchers Dr. Marija Marić, Dr. David Peleman, and Dr. César Reyes Nájera, and developed in collaboration with Dr. Maribel Casas from the Luxembourg Centre for Architecture – LUCA. It focused on soil – a system commonly overlooked in architectural discussion and representation – as its subject, as well as a site for projecting united and shared futures of co-existence. For the second studio, Dr. Marija Marić, Dr. César Reyes Nájera, and Kristina Shatokhina extended these questions through the Worlding Airs design studio, developed in close collaboration with Charles Rouleau and Filipa Lima from Casino Display. Paradoxically, we often notice air only when it is missing or polluted; through the harm inflicted by its toxicity, or the particulate matter it carries. But like soil, air is more than that – it is part of the commons. It is unstable, transgressive and intimate, binding all living things across bodies and borders.
Working with soil and air as architects makes us take responsibility for the invisible in our practice, acknowledging realities of the environment that architecture has long ignored. Over the coming weeks, we will share a series of stories about soils and airs. Originating in research findings and proposals of the design studio architecture students, these stories reflect an emerging professional sensibility and an approach to the commons grounded in care. More broadly, they suggest moving away from demolition and toward long-term maintenance and care, rethinking post-industrial sites as spaces for ecological repair rather than mere real estate redevelopment.
Worlding Soils and Worlding Airs are a call for what architecture theorist Hélène Frichot has outlined as “dirty theory” – a theory that “helps architecture think about the ordinary gestures of care, repair and maintenance that can form part of its mandate”. Following her call to “follow the dirt”, we might ask: Could new forms of environmental solidarity emerge precisely in the invisible – from the soils and airs of the environments we inhabit?