fiction or artifice in which, through habit, we come to believe, a sort of incorrigible illusion of living; and it is as this artifice that the self becomes fully part of nature—our nature.” (Deleuze, 12). Rajchman, via Deleuze, implicates consciousness as epiphenomenal and emergent. Adding to this, I’m thinking consciousness includes the appropriation of environmental data interacting with monadlike thought systems—a trait more often viewed as hive-mind in insects. Through emergent ideas and thought synthesis, a transcendental environmentalism is conceivable; the perceptual recognition of unexplained physical conditions for consciousness’s extension in idea-to-hand production, resulting in design, manufacturing, architecture, objects, and eventually cities. Our transcendent environment is extrapolated from nature, cultural traditions, and objects even as it is examined and interpreted by consciousness tying the world of matter and molecular force together. Animate life, inanimate matter, and natural forces are three strands braiding this ephemeral life matrix. The consequence of our spiraling, plaited matrix is life and thought’s union, where Deleuze’s “incorrigible illusion” comes into being, “incorrigible illusion” implying that we don’t know our place in nature, we don’t understand ideas as an evolutionary forces, and we don’t know how to describe complex molecular fields and their behavior where design is concerned. And, having only just begun to map and decode genes, we don’t very well know boundaries between culture and genetics. For example, recent biological experiments document genes responding to, and evolving in, diverse geographic localities and doing so much faster that previously thought. Research conducted at the University of Maryland, the University of Chicago, and Cornell University supports theories that culture is an evolutionary force. The article notes: “‘If we ask what are the most important evolutionary events of the last 5,000 years, they are cultural, like the spread of agriculture, or extinctions of populations through war or disease,’ said Marcus Feldman, a population geneticist at Stanford. These cultural events are likely to have left deep marks in the human genome.”4
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SITE DOCUMENTATION UQ 147
As Edward O. Wilson wrote: “What is human nature? It is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture, its ultimate product. Rather, human nature is something else for which we have only begun to find ready expression. It is the epigenetic rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture.” Wilson earlier noted:
2004 park Road Station
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACE Erin Wheatley
The brief for this project was to create a transit-oriented development at the Park Road Station site. The existing station is located in close proximity to the historic Boggo Road Gaol and enclosed within a residential demolition control precinct, characterized by vernacular timber and tin houses. The aim was to propose a new form of density that informed new ways of living and travel. The project utilizes the existing vernacular as a mechanism for orientation, and the train station as a place marker in the city. The latter acts as a threshold, blurring the boundary between the individual parts of the city, integrating the precincts into a unique city fabric. A figure ground study of the area revealed the predominant pattern of planning based upon the desire for defined public and private realms— Brisbane’s public space is on the street; private space in the green backyard. So how does one increase density while retaining unique characteristics of the inner-city residential areas? How do you deal with issues of scale, privacy, and the Australian attachment to the backyard? Using the courtyard typology as a method of retaining the backyard, the design enables ownership of public space, one that mirrors the Australian mentality of home ownership. The detached form of the development mirrors the language of the single dwelling and allows for an increase in bulk and scale. The building folds down to break down the scale of a block. The rhythm of the vertical element and the reuse of timber help balance nostalgia and new forms. The raised backyard introduces new commercial and retail tenants at ground level. The strip is continued; the figure ground patterning of the area is repeated, and the area develops as part of a larger fabric from private realm to public street, precinct, and city.