4.0 - Introduction

4.0 - PRELIMINARY DESIGN II WORLDING EXPERIMENTS

4.0.1 WORLDING EXPERIMENTS CONTEXT

Dr Rachel Armstrong proposes that “mature toolsets” for challenges like the Anthropocene “do not yet exist. ... [Instead] they are nascent and being prototyped through the process of experiment” (Armstrong 67). Armstrong argues, “to achieve the necessary paradigm shift in the production of ecological architectures, many visions and strategies must be engaged” (64). In their book The Art of Experiment: Post-pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st Century Architecture and Design, and Gullström-Hughes propose ‘Worlding Experiments’ as a framework for experimental architecture to address contemporary and future challenges like the Anthropocene.

Armstrong begins chapter five, “Extending Knowledge” with the provocation “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born... A revolution in the way we world our worlds is needed to counter the terrifying decline implicit of the Anthropocene” (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 51). Armstrong references Anna Tsing’s book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Tsing proposes we reflect on how we may “re-purpose the tools of modernity against the terrors of Progress to make visible the other worlds it has ignored and damaged” (Tsing 7). Armstrong suggests our current world “struggles most with [the] dynamics that question the human-centeredness of the planet” (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 52). Solutions for the Anthropocene cannot be derived from the human-centered world prescribed by the modern age. Armstrong argues: We must reworld our world through the practice of worlding. First popularised in Beinjz and Time (Heidegger, 1978) by Martin Heidegger, who turned the noun (world...) into the active verb (worlding) and so proposed an ongoing, generative process of world making... (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 52).

4.0.2 WORLDING EXPERIMENTS FRAMEWORK

Chapter 4, Preliminary Design will explore a series of ‘Worlding Experiments’. These experiments will be represented through architectural concepts, iteratively designed in line with this thesis’s aim and objectives. Armstrong and Hughes’ invocation for ‘(re)making our world’ is analogous to Deleuze and Guattari’s, call for ‘new earth’. Both address a destabilised world by invoking new lines of thought through design.

'Worlding experiments' engage an assemblage of “concepts, contexts [and] material expressions” (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 55) Consequently, experiments in chapter 4 will be conducted through various media that include digital, sketch, modeling mixed media, model making and cinematics.

These experiments will ‘re-purpose the tools of modernity against the terrors of Progress’ (Tsing 7) by utilising contemporary tools, such as simulation, game engines, 3D printing and CNC routing.

(Re)worlding experiments will be examined through a dystopian lens. The experiments will be set in a speculative climate-fiction future, where the symptoms of the Anthropocene have intensified. Specifically, in this imaginary future, the layer of anthropogenic waste that defines the Anthropocene has become unavoidably increasingly dense and intrusive. In this chapter of the thesis, the preliminary design outcomes associated with the sorcerer will be referred to as ‘non-human artefacts’, while the outcomes associated with the ‘artisan’ will be referred to as ‘relics’. Their combined assemblage will be referred to as ‘ecocentric artefacts’. The ecocentric artefacts created in this speculated future will act as ‘avatars’ to generate ‘ecological myths’, (re)making our world’ (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 52) and invoking a shift in thinking away from anthropocentrism.

In a dialogue, non-human artefacts will ‘respect what already exists’ (Gullström-Hughes and Armstrong 52), acknowledging and homogenising itself to 'relics'. In the thesis’s preliminary design experiments, this dialectic relationship will be informed by the philosophical persona of the artisan (anthropocentric) and the sorcerer (non-human).

Preliminary Design experiments will test early concepts using the following programmatic typology ‘relics’ • Section 4.1.5: The Scavenger’s Hut

• Section 4.2.6: The Mining Towers

• Section 4.3.5: The Nomadic Agglomerator

• Section 4.4.4: The Collection Bays

To further address Research Objective 1, The Philosophical, Chapter 4 will be structured by the philosophical framework of the ‘rhizome’. Sections 4.1-4.4 will each represent one of the key characteristics of the rhizome: ‘connection and heterogeneity’ (4.1), ‘cartography and decalcomania’(4.2), and ‘multiplicity’ (4.3), while the fourth and final rhizomatic characteristic of ‘asignifying rupture’ (4.4) will combine characteristics of the three previous stages of design into one stage of design experimentation. The beginning of each section will outline key rhizomatic attributes from A Thousand Plateaus that will act as literary provocateurs for the experimental concept design.

Research Objective 2, The Ecological, will be addressed through speculated programming of preliminary design artefacts. This chapter will explore how the artefacts can address both ecological and ontological imbalance by manipulating the very anthropogenic waste products that threaten the stability of our biosphere.

Research Objective 3, The Systematic, will be addressed through a series of systematic diagrams. Early sketch diagrams will be created, translating the key attributes of each section into a speculative system. Systematic diagrams are examined by developing the ecological artefact as components of a much larger system. This system will be explored through the lens of the previous two objectives, communicated through diagrams.