Underground Interiors: Decorating For Alternative Life Styles (Adventures In Decorating And Design)

Product Information

After the author shares his first adventure under his childhood home in Rhode Island he moves on to underground adventures around the world. News about our Dezeen Awards programme, including entry deadlines and announcements. Plus occasional updates. Dezeen Events Guide

Weekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen AwardsUNDERGROUND is written with a mesmerizing prose designed to incite wonder, but descriptions seem always only half cast, as though the author is not fully willing to share every secret. Who woulda expected to learn about placating the old Mondongs by walking the red marlu's songline to the Wilgie Mia? And also learn the importance of ochre? He started with the world below the streets of NYC which hold many secrets; graffiti, concealed and disused stations, people who are a culture of their own who live in the darkness, and much more. He then moved on to Paris and the famous catacombs that criss cross the metropolis.

When the author ventures into the mines of Australia, things got really weird with miners appeasing the lord of the underworld by gifts and sacrifices and making figures to symbolize him. It was strange. Yet it is also beautiful how the aboriginal people see their ancestors as very much part of their world. They honor them in a way that our culture rarely does. The author tells us of his first descent into the underworld when a kid in Rhode Island. It was a moment akin to when eighth grade Bill Gates walked into his classroom to find a computer. Both the author and Gates were hooked by “it.” In the next chapter he wrote of the Jacques Cousteau of the underworld. Someone that lives in caves or underground for a time to test his reactions. The author then tried his own 24 hour experiment in darkness in a cave. Alongside this he wrote of our first studies of sensory depravation. Fascinating read all the way around.

I really enjoyed this book. Hunt not only explores the actual underground spaces from New York to Australia and Paris to Mexico, but extends his exploration to how underground space has influenced the human psyche and behavior from the beginning. He talks about the psychology of being underground, the role underground spaces play in various religious beliefs around the world and even how life may have evolved deep underground rather than in a the hot soup at the surface.