| eco studio core studio digital diversions soft bodies drawing + urbanism campus planning degree project cv |
washington university spring 2008
led by mitchell joachim, phd
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.
led by mitchell joachim, phd
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.