Our relationship to the ground is, culturally speaking, paradoxical: for we appreciate it only in so far as it bows down to our will. Let the ground rise up to resist us, let it prove porous, spongy, rough, irregular – let it assert its native title, its right to maintain traditional surfaces – and instantly our engineering instinct is to wipe it out; to lay our foundations on rationally – apprehensible level ground.

– Paul Carter, The Lie of the Land[i]