Interior Landscape: Life within the cracks of the Anthropocene challenges the white cube of modernity by including the more-than-humans who live within the cracks of the built environment into the design process – not seeing them as pests but as partners of multi-species world building.
It is now predicted that around 8% of the Earth’s surface is engulfed by modern built-up environments. The interior’s of this expansion is framed by modernity’s straight lines and white-walled aesthetic; an aesthetic that reinforces the detachment from nuanced landscapes and ecologies. At the root of this disruption are the disciplines of architecture and design; for it is through these professions that modernity’s aesthetic spreads from furniture, rooms, houses, to cities.
By critically examining modern aesthetics in relation to ecology, a new sense of beauty that allows for spontaneous growth may arise within the cracks of the anthropocene. In this sense, architecture might become the new foundation for a thriving kinship between humans and more-than-humans.
The installation was not a finished product, but rather the initiation of a process. My role as a designer was to break free the designers’ control over their objects and enable for a dialogue to take place between the designer and the more-than-human that calls this object home.
By critically examining modern aesthetics in relation to ecology, a new sense of beauty that allows for spontaneous growth may arise within the cracks of the anthropocene. In this sense, architecture might become the new foundation for a thriving kinship between humans and more-than-humans.
The installation was not a finished product, but rather the initiation of a process. My role as a designer was to break free the designers’ control over their objects and enable for a dialogue to take place between the designer and the more-than-human that calls this object home.
Research contributors
Rebecca Lewin
Rob Dunn
Julia Rijssenbeek
Angelo Renna
Meredith Root-Bernstein
References
1) Encyclopedia of the World’s Biomes Michael Goldstein, Dominick DellaSala - Published June 2020
1) When the Things We Study Respond to Each Other: Tools for Unpacking “the Material” Anna Tsing - Published May 2019
2) Evolution of the indoor biome - NESCent Working Group on the Evolutionary Biology of the Built Environment - Published April 2015
3) biodiversity is messy: a plea for wilder cities - Marco Roos - Published October 2021.
