AR September 2024: Ground

The ground is sinking. A crater nearly a kilometre wide has opened in the Siberian forest as permafrost there melts for the first time in 650,000 years. The revealed ground, depicted on the cover, is releasing thousands of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year; but it also contains evidence of the Earth’s history. In the issue’s keynote essay, Dima Srouji traces entangled histories in the ground of Gaza; but the ground is also a place of rebirth and regrowth, as buildings in the issue in Ecuador, Sri Lanka and elsewhere show. Some of these buildings rediscover the ground as a structural material, radically unlearning the reliance on carbon-intensive construction. Read the full editorial