Bibliothèque de terres de Poitou-Charentes

Kôichi Kurita

Bibliothèque de terres – Poitou-Charentes, 2005-2015

Acquisition by the City of Melle, with the support of the Aquitaine - Limousin - Poitou-Charentes Region in 2015

In 1990, Kôichi Kurita began celebrating the beauty of nature by creating a library of soil samples from 3,225 Japanese municipalities. He then extended his approach to France and presented the Land Library – Poitou-Charentes in 2015 in Melle. It is initially made up of 365 handfuls of soil taken from 84 towns and villages in Vienne, 55 in Deux-Sèvres, 48 ​​in Charente and 81 in Charente-Maritime. Reduced to the state of pigments, they are presented in glass bottles engraved with the name of each of the municipalities from which they come. The library is currently made up of 220 bottles on display at the Melle media library. It is visible at any time from the street.

The Land Library / Poitou-Charentes, was presented at the Saint-Savinien church in Melle in 2015 as part of the VIIth Biennale of Melle, then at the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy in within the framework of COP 21.