6.0 - Conclusions and Critical Reflections

This design-led research investigation explored three different approaches for the integration of Philosophical, Ecological, and Systematic approaches to generate hypothetical, future-looking architectural artefacts that represent a shift in thinking away from anthropocentrism.

One of the most interesting areas of investigation for the author was the exploration of architectural solutions at a planetary scale. The Anthropocene is a significant global problem, perhaps the greatest environmental problem that exists for Terran life, as it extends to every aspect of the biosphere. In reflection, the Systematic Approach appeared to be the most useful approach for tackling ‘hyper-object’ scaled problems. By imagining speculative architectural interventions as a series of nodes and connecting intensities, large-scale problems became more manageable for the speculative architect. Generating nodes (artefacts) that could grow and fluidly adapt to ever-evolving contexts meant the system could transform and scale in response. Connections between nodes could be created by multiple components, where a principal requirement was the ability to transfer information between nodes. Design-research explorations revealed that designing the nodes of systems was one productive solution for enabling speculative architecture to engage planetary-scale environmental issues. By focusing on designing nodes, speculative architects can focus on humanscaled architectures, so that their architectural outcomes are acceptable to the audience, and dialogues invoked by the architecture are more readily comprehended.

An important discovery made by the author was the unique opportunities for future-looking design explorations that were made available by exploring the scope of designing with philosophy. There were both strengths and weaknesses to the approach. During experimentation relating to Research Objective 1, The Philosophical Approach, the author discovered it is difficult to represent the full extent of a philosophy through architecture. This thesis investigated Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of the rhizome by segmenting it into its 4 key characteristic sections, and then experimenting with the key attributes of those 4 sections. As a complex philosophical system with a broad range of characteristics, the scope of a rhizome is broad in application. By exploring the philosophical concept in separate sections, the rhizome became more appropriate to the restricted scope of this design-led research investigation. Upon reflection, this investigation suggests that a similar methodology might successfully be utilised for examining other philosophical concepts in related speculative, planetary-scale, design-led research investigations. Experimental concepting, through iterative and staged design, revealed how discrete elements of a philosophical concept can be most successfully translated into an architectural context. Not every attribute and characteristic of the philosophical concept

will be explicitly apparent in the final design, as evidenced in this thesis’s final Developed Design outcomes. However, a set of speculative architectural outcomes generated using this methodology can be achieved that begin to represent a hierarchy of key philosophical characteristics, initially established within the concept and preliminary design stages.

‘Worlding experiments’ – the methodology explored in Chapter 4 Preliminary Design – were successful in broadening the scope of conceptual architectural outcomes. Without manually experimenting with the computational outcomes originally developed in Chapter 3, concepts would have a very narrow field of conceptual outcomes. Architectural design concepts would be limited by the algorithm and numerical parameters from which they were derived.

One of the most useful ‘toolsets’ for pushing computational concepts appeared to be the dialectic relationship between the ‘artisan’ and ‘sorcerer’. The philosophical persona of the ‘artisan’ provided an agency to create an architectural dialogue between the non-human artefacts––whose agency was computational not determinable––and a manual anthropocentric agency. The success of the ‘artisan’ and ’sorcerer’ toolset aligns with the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari, who argue that all assemblages need a balance between ‘smooth’ (the sorcerer) and ‘striated’ (the artisan).

Temporal ambiguity, explored as a method of shifting anthropocentric thought in Research Objective 2, The Ecological Approach, appeared to have the most potential to extend to built architectures. Temporal ambiguity (postulated by Wark) was underdeveloped through the Preliminary Design Stage of this investigation, but was effectively utilised in the Developed Design Stage outcomes.

Moving forward, as a speculative application of this approach to the architectural industry, buildings could be intentionally designed to examine ‘modern ruination’ to confront humans with their mortality in the Anthropocene. Temporally ambiguous buildings could be built with an array of parts, each with a different temporal life span. With some parts intentionally lasting longer than others, and different parts needing to be replaced at different points in time, a building could build temporal ambiguity. The temporal uncertainty brought on by temporally ambiguous buildings could make humans question and critically reflect upon their egocentric timescales.

Moving further forward, this methodology could be applied to architectural research exploring challenges at a wide range of scales. Due to the limitations of the scope of this design-led research investigation, only a focused range of hypothetical challenges at a planetary scale were explored. Applying this methodology to various other scales, both macro and micro, would test the methodology’s ability to scale to different sizes through the Systematic Approach. As another example of how this investigation might be further extended in future applications, it is also recognised that the application of different philosophies would yield different outcomes. The architectural translation and testing of relevant philosophical ideas appears to offer a rich source of opportunity for speculative architectural investigations that are looking toward a future that has not yet arrived.