Research:
Ecotarium
An Observatory of Nature’s Collapse, Zurich & North Pole
Washington University Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design
Principal Investigators: Terreform, Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D.
"There is no more throwing away…away has gone away." - Gertrude Stein
Design Projects:
01. Javier D. Alonso: www.architaktos.com
02. Laura Anderson
03. Lucy Askew: www.lucylabors.com
04. Kun Cao: www.semiarch.com
05. Carmen Cervantes
06. Sung ll Choi: www.archinous.com
07. Christopher Collin Farrar: www.seeferrari.com
08. Yen-Yu Lin: www.mangoslush.com
09. Neil E. Marx: www.marxarch.com
10. Andrea L. Michalski: www.inmyownmilieu.com
11. Anthony P. Prograis: www.hip-hopitecture.com
12. Chris Rehwoldt: www.archreh.com
13. Michele E. Richards: www.formaskew.com
14. Xiang Xiao: www.andoscat.com
15. Andrew Zimmerman: www.aezdesign.com
Studio Description:
A torrent of clichés prescribing the end is already here. Our ecological society has formed around the possibility of the collapse, through pollution, various floods, the greenhouse effect, overpopulation, etc. Hence, alarming criteria makes up the roots of an environmentalist debate. Now, the gravity of industrial errors and mishaps renders the appearance of a new society. This is the eschatological society, a society of the collapsed. Paul Virilio suggests this raises primary philosophical questions. His raison d'être is; “to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck; to invent the airplane is to invent the crash”. Any valuation of scientific progress implies reciprocal accident progress. Designers converse about inventing airplanes with a thousand seats, which then imply a possible thousand deaths. Aristotle said, “The accident reveals the substance,” which is to say that one cannot separate the innovation of an object, technique, or place from its devalued negative side. Therefore, if tomorrow’s humankind is to flourish, what then constitutes the magnitude of our failure?
Objective:
Our goal is to create and program an Ecotarium that makes a true spectacle of ecology. Making ecologies visible in design technology and practice is vastly significant. We do this by tracing the paths of nature. Our Ecotarium should cultivate investigations within the forms of nature to retrieve the wisdom in mosaics, connectivity, biodiversity, patches, matrices and etc. The first signal of humanist intent is our complex ensemble of design. Any well designed edifice demands a supposition of possibilities and interpretations. Green design seeks a genius loci revealed in both the struggle and the fellowship of numerous augmented assemblies. This Ecotarium must qualify and disseminate such practices. Qualified by techno-scientific methods and routines, it is vital to admit that the practice of green architecture is still at length a craft.
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