Operationalizing Artificiality

Site as Thesis Pinup

BLOG RE-TITLE

artificial systems: SITE AS FUTUREPRESENT LANDSCAPES

This title is a nod towards an article in AD magazine, Landscape Architecture Site/Non-Site - Operationalizing Patch Dynamics (2007) written by Victoria Marshall and Bryan Mcgrath. The project reveals an urban design approach to the city as a dynamically populated system, incorporating ecology theorems which I want to extract and study.

For my thesis, I want to re-appropriate the knowledge that I am gaining from my SNRE class- Human Dominated Landscapes, which I decided to take because the course is primarily focused on ecologies affected by the urbanization and the human element. My term paper topic I have designed is meant to bridge this class with thesis research, which is entitled:"Ecosystem matrices and mosaics- The use of Patch Dynamics design on polluted riparian borders."

This fascination with controlled energies/artificiality began after research and reading done about the vast invisible infrastructural systems which are continually breaking down within urban rural gradient. A measure of the extent of influence urbanization has on a previously native landscape.

At the beginning of Bruce Mau's 'Massive Change', he states "For most of us, design is invisible, until it fails." I placed this quote on my first 24x24 board because, I feel this it begins to break down the current state of affairs which exists between failing ecosystems and the human species. We are now in state of infinitely "declining" ecologies which we are deemed responsible for continually maintaining.

Site As Thesis Text:

past conditions:

reminiscent of the modernistic bubble-dome environments proposed in the 60’s & 70’s, a time when crisis became the framework for a reaction-based architecture. this modern model sought to capture and sustain ecoligies, severing them from their fateful surroundings. ecologies were to be hermetically sealed in amorphous bubbles, an iconic symbol of a closed and self-sufficient system.

On the second 24x24 board, I begin to set up the thesis argument with another quote from Mau's "Massive Change" -

"Most of the time, we live our lives within these invisible systems,

blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed

infrastructures that support them." - Bruce Mau

The words intensely designed infrastructures and artificial life resonate with the development of my thesis in respect to my critique of the modernistic approach to siphon ecosystems from their environments in order to allow them to "survive". Disaster architecture and bubble domes engulfing systems and cities embraces the traditional belief that ecological systems are self-sufficient closed loop processes. My argument is that contemporary science has proven biological ecologies are co-dependent on patterns of intersection in order to maintain equilibrium and heterogeneity.

Site As Thesis Text:

future conditions:

It will no longer be sustainable for the human race to act in ecological stewardship for the remainder of our being. the design of future landscapes must embody technology-based functionality, with ecologically driven science. complex artificial ecology systems developed as spatially cohesive open resourceloops will be able to respond dynamically to an imbalance in the ecosystem equilibrium through employment of the concept of patch dynamics.