Students:
Julia Almeida (Brazil),
Jose Cadilhe (Portugal),
Michail Desyllas (Greece),
Salih Topal (Belgium)
Tutor: Alisa Andrasek
Description:
This research is based on a conceptual approach towards synthetic ecologies – systems created to develop symbiotic relations with the environment. We view nature not as a given state or a pure and finished system, but as a complex organism that is continuously evolving and adapting to different conditions. This is contrary to the conservative and romantic notion that defines nature as a balanced order of self-reproduction in stasis. Therefore, we explored how architecture can actively participate in the promotion of a better environment as well as the re-computation of complex ecological systems, augmenting and expanding its properties. Highlighting alternative methods of fabrication through material behavioural computation, Natural Prosthesis emphasises self-organised and emergent processes while addressing social and political inputs as part of a vast definition of ecology, which sets the foundation for this proto(e)cological proposal. Thus, architecture is not designed as a passive element but as a metabolic system, a catalyst of enabling new ways of looking at our territories and ideas of inhabitation. Ultimately, architecture becomes another living structure establishing a proactive dialogue with its surroundings and a platform that generates an artificial ecosystem – a synthetic producer of nature.
