Abstract:
Only one creature has carved life for itself on every habitat on Earth: Homo sapiens. Our science and technological advances enabled us to alter 75% of earth's land, creating a new geological époque: the anthroposcene. The complacent trust in our own technologies and the continued pre-Copernican belief of an anthropocentric world led us to uncontrolled exploitation of the biosphere, erasing entire ecosystems of species whilst simultaneously leading ourselves to becoming the next most threatened species. Our idea of a world in which humanity lives in a zero sum relationship with nature must be replaced with a holistic model of the world in which every part of the living biosphere-including humans-are intrinsically linked by co-evolutionary and symbiotic relationships. This thesis is an attempt to create a non-anthropocentric urbanism by utilising architecture as an active agent in biological conservation. Structures no longer superficially mimics forms found in nature, nor does it attempt to isolate patches of nature in the city. Instead, the architecture becomes the apparatus to initiate a co-evolutionary relationship between the 'born' and the 'made'.
