Symbiocene

We exist in the Anthropocene, an age of interconnected planetary crises – an unsustainable maldevelopment of modernity poised to undermine the very foundation of life on Earth. It is a time of poly-crisis, defined by uncertainty, unpredictability, chaos, and perpetual rapid change.

This year, DS13 set out to explore a potential antidote to this alarming status quo: the Symbiocene. If the Anthropocene is based on human domination, the Symbiocene is predicated on symbiosis, living together for mutual benefit; a new era of possibility derived from the interconnectedness of the man-made and the natural. What role would architecture play in such a context? We have undertaken an approach akin to Laugier’s Primitive Hut, a manifesto disguised as architecture’s origin story in which nature plays a crucial role.

Dreamscapes

In a time of polycrisis, perhaps the most radical response is to tactically retreat and dream the world anew. Using digital environments we crafted new worlds by blending the real and the fictional. In these spaces we suspended disbelief and enjoyed para-plausible scenarios that speculate on new ways of inhabiting our world.

Dreamscaping the Symbiocene

Our site was a 13-kilometre stretch of the River Thames between Tower Bridge and the Thames Barrier. Dominated by industrial warehouses and derelict land, we approached this seemingly ubiquitous and familiar Terra Incognita as a locus for retreat, experimentation and world-building.

We embedded ourselves within the cultural, political, historical and material contexts of the river as nautical territory, thoroughfare, landscape, ecosystem, trade route, habitat and legend. More than a site, the river constituted the very medium of architecture as we explored floating, submerged and amphibious structures; those that retreat within their alluvial beds, resonate with the tide and tether the river to the city.

Buildings as Worlds

What happens when buildings are conceived as ‘worlds within worlds’ that, through their scale and performance, exist at the boundary between architecture, landscape, ecology and the city? Blurring the threshold between building and nature, we imagined such buildings as cabinets of curiosities where samples of the city, the living world, tectonic conglomerates and typological fragments co- exist together as a collective, exuding nearness, provoking strange adjacencies and a sense of wonder at every scale.

Tutors

Andrei Martin is a partner at PLP Architecture, a London-based multidisciplinary design practice.

Andrew Yau is a design director at Urban Future Organisation, an international practice and design research collaborative.

Guest Critics / Special Thanks
Pierre d’Avoine, Beth Cullen, Nasser Golzari, Sean Griffiths, Jane McAllister, Laura Nica, Paresh Parmar, Alicia Pivaro,Yara Sharif Rory Sherlock, Andrew Yau