Some underground projects are ancient and inhabited; others exist only as drawings that changed how architects think. Together they map the range of the field — from a proposed inverted tower plunging beneath a capital city's main square to off-grid homes made of packed-earth tires. Every project here is real and attributed, whether built or proposed.
BNKR Arquitectura's “Earthscraper” — Mexico City (proposed)
The concept that gave this whole idea its name came from the Mexican firm BNKR Arquitectura (Esteban Suárez), which in 2011 unveiled the Earthscraper: a 65-story inverted pyramid excavated roughly 300 meters straight down beneath the Zócalo, Mexico City's vast central square. The proposal responded to a real constraint — strict height limits and preservation rules in the historic center forbid tall buildings — by going down instead of up, capping the void with a glass floor at plaza level so the square could remain open for public life above. The design placed a museum in the upper levels, then housing, retail and offices descending around a central light-filled core. It was never built, and formidable challenges (the city's soft, waterlogged former-lakebed soil and seismicity chief among them) make it unlikely, but as a provocation it permanently expanded the vocabulary of what a building can be.
Earthships — Taos, New Mexico (built, ongoing)
At the opposite end of the spectrum from a speculative megatower are the Earthships of architect Michael Reynolds, built since the 1970s around Taos, New Mexico. An Earthship is a passive-solar, off-grid, earth-bermed home whose thick south-bermed walls are made from rammed-earth-filled automobile tires, with interior partitions of packed cans and bottles. The homes harvest rainwater, treat it through multiple uses, generate their own power, and grow food in a front greenhouse, all while the bermed mass holds a stable interior temperature. Reynolds' firm, Earthship Biotecture, developed the largest concentration of them at the Greater World community outside Taos and has built and taught the method worldwide. Earthships are the most influential owner-buildable expression of earth-sheltered, self-sufficient living.
Two ends of one idea
BNKR's Earthscraper (proposed, monumental, urban) and Reynolds' Earthships (built, humble, off-grid) share the same core insight explored throughout this site: the ground is a resource, not just a place to put a foundation. See the underlying design principles in earth-sheltered homes.
The Lowline — New York City (proposed / prototyped)
The Lowline proposed to turn a long-abandoned trolley terminal beneath Manhattan's Lower East Side — the former Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, disused since 1948 — into the world's first underground public park. Conceived by Dan Barasch and architect James Ramsey (RAAD Studio), its signature idea was “remote skylight” technology: sunlight collected at street level, concentrated, and piped underground to sustain living plants. The team proved the concept in the Lowline Lab, an open-to-the-public prototype that ran in a nearby warehouse from 2015 to 2017 and successfully grew a garden on redirected sunlight. Despite that success and city interest, the full park did not secure the funding and site commitments needed and the effort wound down — but it remains the most serious modern attempt at a daylit underground public space.
Villa Vals — Vals, Switzerland (built, 2009)
Near the famous thermal baths of Vals, architects SeARCH and Christian Müller Architects completed Villa Vals in 2009: a house dug entirely into an Alpine slope so that, from most angles, it is invisible. Its only real face is a large oval opening in the hillside, behind which a curved glazed wall floods the interior with light and frames the mountain view. Villa Vals is a widely published demonstration that a fully earth-embedded home can be architecturally ambitious and full of daylight rather than dark and bunker-like.
Peter Vetsch's Earth Houses — Dietikon, Switzerland (built)
Swiss architect Peter Vetsch has built dozens of organic, sprayed-concrete earth houses since the 1970s, the best-known being the cluster at Lättenstrasse in Dietikon — nine curving, grass-covered dwellings arranged around a small pond, continuously lived in for decades. Vetsch's work shows that earth-sheltered homes need not look severe; their forms can be soft, sculptural and unmistakably domestic.
Coober Pedy's dugout churches — South Australia (built, in use)
Among the most atmospheric real underground spaces are the dugout churches of Coober Pedy, including the Serbian Orthodox and Catholic churches carved directly into the desert sandstone. They serve a working congregation, stay naturally cool in extreme heat, and stand as everyday proof that whole communities already live and worship below ground — the human reality behind the underground cities story.
These projects, built and proposed alike, share the conviction that runs through this entire site: the most interesting frontier in architecture may be the one directly beneath our feet. For the engineering that makes any of it real, see Building Down; for the trade-offs, see benefits and challenges.
Sources and attribution: BNKR Arquitectura (Esteban Suárez), Earthscraper concept (2011); Michael Reynolds / Earthship Biotecture, Taos, New Mexico; Lowline (Dan Barasch and James Ramsey / RAAD Studio) and the Lowline Lab (2015–2017); SeARCH and Christian Müller Architects, Villa Vals (2009); Peter Vetsch earth houses, Dietikon; Coober Pedy dugout churches. Proposed projects are identified as such; details are drawn from public architectural reporting.