Visceral Intricacy IV
Artificially Natural
The Agritechture of Tomorrow
Visceral Intricacy is a studio of research and innovative architectural design that seek new experientially driven design methods for the 21st century. We have searched in vast artificial environments underground (Vi1), in publicly performed religious ceremonies (Vi2), in virtual prosthetics of ancient ruins (Vi3), and now. In flowers...
The members of Vi4 will explore the visceral and intricate world of plants and humans past, present and future potential symbiosis with them. The challenge will be to create a place where a specific plant can be grown, processed and consumed in an holistic composition of carefully crafted experiences.
Members of Vi4 will:
- Explore and study the intricate spaces of wild natures
- Specialize on a specific plant and its growth, use, and culture
- Travel to Singapore to see some of the most advanced conservatories in the world
- Chose any site in the world.
Introduction
No man made environment presents such intricacy and complexity as pure and wild as natural spaces. For design inspiration architects and designers often look at other designs similar to the challenge before them. Nature might infuse design of objects and machines but seldom architecture. And when it happens it is usually integrated in exteriors on a purely symbolic level, and it is often something that emerges in a post rational stage to please clients seeking easy metaphors. Members of Vi4 will approach nature from a different point of view, not from the back, but towards the front. We will walk through nature into the final design project. We will study the spaces, proportions, volumes, textures, colours, transitions, phenomenons, transformations and light conditions of nature, before we even know what we will need it for. This working approach will offer the possibility of finding qualities that we did not even know was there, rather than look for things we hope to find.
Background
Architecture has always been what separates us from the dangers of nature but it has always been constructed from nature. The architectural origin myths of the primitive hut understands all architectural form as representations of the first structures man built out of branches and trees. The primitive hut was used as an example by theorists like Marc-Antoine Laugier in the 18th century to prove that although technology brings our built environment to abstraction, all architecture has its roots in the ground that feeds it and is formed by its constraints.
Organized manipulation of nature began at least 10,000 years ago as early technology made agriculture possible. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies, based on evidence from south west Asia and China, indicates an antecedent period of intensification and increasing sedentism in south West Asia and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China.
As agriculture made it possible for societies to form in permanent locations manipulation in plant origin and growth soon moved from being a purely practical act of producing food, medicine and material for construction and became culturally used ornamentally or to form places of pleasure. Egyptian Pharaohs planted exotic trees and cared for them; they brought ebony wood from the Sudan, pine and cedar from Syria. Hatshepsut’s expedition to Punt returned bearing thirty-one live frankincense trees, the roots of which were carefully kept in baskets for the duration of the voyage; this is the first recorded attempt to transplant foreign trees.
As the built environment became some what natures in their own right in the mega cities of the world our relationship to plants have faded during the last centuries. And the links between cities and the lands that produces plants for food or construction is lumbering and outdated.
Vi4 and the Future
Plants are what we eat, what we wear, what we live in, and even what we breathe. Bellow Vi4 proposes a list of statements to be agreed or disagreed upon by all members.
- Vi4 respectfully bow for plants, but also celebrates our ability to artificially manipulate their natural habitat and natural growth patterns for our needs and desires.
- Vi4 Does not exclude the possibility that plants might have senses and could form something similar to what we call thoughts.
- Vi4 also understand the disaster ahead if we do not better treat the very source of our lives as we clumsily temper with fragile systems that we do not understand.
- Vi4 understands the risks and even possible disasters that the spread of Genetically Modified Plants could result in globally but does not exclude it as a way to save humans from starvation and as a natural way to artificially reanimate evolution.
- Vi4 Wilfully accepts the fact that our state of mind and emotional state is heavily influenced by what we choose to consume, of which all matter has its roots in plants.
- Vi4 believes in a bright future of increased plant/human symbiosis where our never ending desire for innovation and development can mean more biodiversity, not less, and a more sustainable and interesting planet and solar system.
- Vi4 sees that plants are our neglected mentor which with never ending trust and support shall be rewarded and celebrated.
- Vi4 members will in their own unique ways create sustainable places that offers an insight into the future of agriculture/horticulture/forestry/botany for a post industrial digital world.
1 Natural Spaces
We will begin by visiting the wild life reserve Bangpoo situatied on along the coastline of Samut Prakan just south of Bangkok. Bangpoo is famous for bird watching during the dry season when rare birds migrate from the north to escape the cold, but Bangpoo also provides some of the most lush mangrove forests and a variety of other species of plants. We will explore the intricate and visceral spatial qualities produced by threes, shrub’s and weed’s. We will be working in groups of three with one specifically selected natural space in the Bangpoo for each group. The space will be measured photographed, filmed, sketched and scanned. This material will then be processed and converted to digital 3D models and drawings from which analytic conclusions can be drawn.
Architects seldom speak of natural spaces like forests, meadows, fields, jungles etc in terms of spatial qualities. Perhaps this is because architects, unlike landscape architects have very little training in talking and even thinking about them as spaces. Perhaps it even has something to do with the fact that architects find it hard to judge something that has not been created by man.
The particular formation of a little opening in a forest for instance has no force as a single unit, there is no designer. Every single living organism in the space has through evolution an empirical behaviour with clear goals, but they all operate independently and with no oversight, such as a designer would have had. The independent forces from each plant, the conditions given by the land, the climate and the sun offers such a complex and intricate network of events that is incomprehensible to most people, and perhaps especially for architects who tend to seek the bigger picture. Perhaps the final most inexplicable fact about a space in nature is that it is in constant change. As long as it is alive, it is growing and decaying in a pace that is not possible for us to perceive in the moment, but if it was possible for us, to speed up time, as is possible with a film camera we would see the boiling energy in constant and never ending change as plants fall and rise.
We will through our observations and survey of a natural space in the Bangpoo, full of life, complexity and change work towards growing more cerebral fibres , bridging the gap between our rational knowledge about plants and ecosystems, and the more emotional and subjective sensitivity we cannot ignore when observing nature.
Perhaps the most dictating factor in wild nature is the phenomenology of the changing climatic conditions such as seasons and the radical change from night till day. We will spend a full day at the Bangpoo observing the changes in light, temperature and atmosphere.
The final goal for this first phase is to produce drawings and physical models that through abstraction manages to describe the static spatial conditions of the space. Ones this is done each member of the group will chose one subjective reading of the space to develop further, using the material collectively produced by the group.
The choice of space should be done considering the following points
- Complexity. That the space presents a satisfying amount of spatial and formal complexity.
- Biodiversity. That the space presents a high of different species and types of plants.
- Enclosure. That the space presents a clear enclosure that produces something that could be defined as a space or a volume.
2 Plantigation (Plant Investigation)
The final challenge of Vi4 is to create a place where a specific plant can be grown, processed, consumed and or sold. One plant will be chosen in this phase and investigated in great detail. The choice of plant is a crucial part of the project as it will inform the coming phases of the project as the plant will have vastly different needs in terms of climate, light, life span processing etc. The study will be concerning everything from the plants molecular structure to its decorative applications. The plant chosen could be small as a rose, or large as a maple tree. The plant should have the following criteria:
- Carry flowers or elements of similar centrality
- Have a cultural relevance and cultural history in one or more areas of the world.
- Have the possibility of processing, resulting in a product consumed as food, drink of medicine or as material (by humans.)
The following points will be covered in the study:
- Biology
- Molecular structure
- Growth
- Appearance
- Geography
- Phenology
- Process
- Processing history
- Processing methods
- Processing results and usage
- Consumption
- Food
- Perfume
- Drink
- Materials
- Medicine
- Culture
- Cultural relevance
- Myths and folklore
- Decorative Use
- Ornamentation and Decorative Arts
- In architecture
- In cloths and fabrics
- In art
The Plantigation will result in a comprehensive set of drawings, diagrams and documents that together will serve as the source of future design decisions.
3 Singapore
From garden city to city in a garden. This is Singapore’s vision for its future. A city which is seen through leaves and branches. Where the plants take the primary role in forming spaces in the city where people meet. It might seem obvious but this approach is rather radical, and its making Singapore an even more desirable place to live and to visit. Singapore also have a wide array of botanical gardens, herbarium, green houses and parks. We will travel together to Singapore to study these green places. The places of most interests to us will be:
- Singapore Botanical Gardens
- Singapore Herbarium
- Library of Botany and Horticulture
- Garden’s by the Bay
- Singapore Zoo
- National Orchid Garden
- Chinese Garden
- We will also visit:
- Chang Architects
- WOHA Architects
4 Site Research
Plants relates deeply to its geographical location concerning conditions such as temperature, ecosystem’s, seasons, soil conditions etc. The site for the final project could be anywhere in the world but should be chosen carefully with the research in mind. What conditions are ideal for the plant? Or perhaps there are sites that would benefit massively from the plant but lack the suitable conditions? There will be no restrictions on type of site conditions as it will depend on the wide range of conditions required by the plant. If for instance the rose has been chosen, a climatically controlled rooftop greenhouse in a mayor metropolis might be possible. If the chosen plant is the rubber tree, a tropical site with vast amounts of plantation land would be necessary.
The following points will be covered in the site research:
- Climate
- Culture
- Geography
- Natural Spaces
5 Design
The final challenge is to create a place where a specific plant can be grown, processed, consumed and or sold.
The final projects will include the following:
- Greenhouse (depends on the plant)
- Research centre
- Growing facilities
- Processing facilities
- Offices
- Sales area
- Visitors area
- Additional program
Plants essential role in human life has traces in all cultural practice, in all eras of civilisation. Plants are found either directly as building materials or as symbolic elements in art and architecture. The first part of this final design phase of the project a series of new interpretations of those ancient representations studied in The Plantigation phase will be explored and realized, both looking into the past and into the future. The exploration could take many paths and the results will range the full spectrum of symbolic and artificial representations of the chosen plant. The studies could focus on everything from colour and texture transitions to growth pattern, layering of leaves to states of decay. The Plantigation phase will contribute with many essential building blocks such as the plants cultural, decorative and ornamental applications, which will be integrated into the production of the new interpretations. This phase will result in a series of botanical style drawings describing the new interpretations of the plants symbolic and cultural applications as well as images showing conceptual spaces composed of the new interpretations that will find its place as either driving forces to the design or as details.
Each project will have its unique issues and challenges as each plant requires different conditions and each site offers different conditions. The final design must function both as a growing facility with careful considerations regarding the plants needs with production and post production facilities, but also as a culturally meaningful place where people can come to work, learn, teach and enjoy.
There will be no size restrictions for the projects, as the size depends solely on the specifications and conditions required for the plant.
