● ▲ Co-dwelling
designed at Yale University (2020)
This two-part studio project explores ideas of domestication between humans and non-human agents and questions how these relationships can co-produce architecture of reciprocity for all occupants.
Part 1: Biome
This Möbius drawing study is a culmination of research of the “above” and “below” conditions of the Eurasian steppe, which exists as an index of the reciprocal relationship between nomads and the land, animals, and other non-human entities. The assemblage arranges a non-linear representation of time and is composed of layers of perspectives of the agents within the Eurasian steppe, such as humans, flora, fauna, and land.
The largest steppe in the world is the Eurasian steppe—also the location of the silk road. What fascinated me about this particular site was the sort-of symbiotic relationship between the steppe and the trade routes. Kazahk nomads native to the area would ascend and descend the steppe depending on the season—as well as the animals they were hunting. The flatness allowed for easy movement across the land and the constant movement meant the steppes would stay in relatively flat tiers. In a sense, the human, land, and animal evolved with each other. To pick up Yuval Noah Harari’s example of expanding the scale from human to Earth in size and timespan one could argue humans domesticated the land and much as the land domesticated the human (Harari’s used wheat as an example). Same could be said for animals as well. However, the silk road became a vector of colonization, along with the spread of Black Death, from Europe to Asia. It is the mindset of capitalism at a global scale that encourages a removed perspective from other humans, animals, and land: an alienated gaze. The symbiotic relationship had become the economy of extraction and colonization. Currently, the Silk Road is being ‘revived’ under a new name: the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is an international infrastructural trade network developed by China, which invests in Asia, Europe, and Africa. The economic trade route was packaged as “moving history forward, bringing people together”, which will open up a infrastructural network of posts and ports on land and water made possible through loans from the Chinese government and diplomacy agreements. The rhetoric of the continuation of history and scale of transit oriented infrastructure can be heavily criticized for its neocolonialist tactics and lack of ecological awareness. The scale of global trade networks and the priority given to cars perpetuates the use of cars and other machines that use carbon-intensive fossil fuels for energy (Elisa Iturbe). The new Silk Road does not derive from the nomadic relationship between humans and land, rather it more heavily leans to the objectification of the land and other countries in the guise of globalization, economic promise, and as “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”.
Part 2: Co-cooning
A dwelling proposal for humans and silkworms, designed in collaboration with silkworms. I mapped generational cycles of human and silkworm lifespans as well as habits and scale of movements in space to understand what it means for these seemingly disparate kins to co-exist in space.
“... Uexkull instead supposes an infinite variety of perceptual worlds that, though they are uncommunicating and reciprocally exclusive, are all equally perfect and linked together as if in a gigantic musical score...”
- Agamben Giorgio, Anthropological Machine
Simon Bignall and Daryle Rigney write in Indigeneity, Posthumanism and Nomad Thought: Transforming Colonial Ecologies, “human achievement has typically been measured in the modern era by the advancing technologies through which nature can be subjugated as an inert substance freely available for human appropriation and exploitation” is exemplary of the practice of colonization thoughts and the subjugation of land of which is encouraged via capital gain.
There has been a codification, and therefore abstraction, of others through architecture. This codification is linear - it follows the trajectories of history, with its biases and perspective. As we begin speaking for other beings, we alienate the reality of their perspective.