Studio 10
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS OF URBANISATION AND ARCHITECTURE IN PROTECTED NATURAL AREAS.
Justyna Karakiewicz
Studio Description
Join this subject to make a difference, contributing to an important environmentally and culturally sustainable future. In this studio, we will develop tools and approaches to help the Galapagos Islands understand their opportunities and choices. Each of you will develop ideas, designs or tools that will together allow us to explore alternatives.
The environmental crisis associated with urbanization have been well recognised in fields of ecology and design. But very few of us would ever want to admit that environmental crisis is a design crisis. [..] We have used design cleverly in the service of narrowly defined human interests but have neglected its relationship with our fellow creatures (Van der Ryn and Cowan 1995). Probably one of the better places in the world to observe this phenomenon are Galapagos Islands. Human population arrived in the islands 500 years ago and for centuries the balance between human and natural system has been maintain, but in the past 50 years this situation has dramatically changed and one of the most pristine natural environments in the world is now under severe threat, due to increase population, and number of tourists. Furthermore, most of designed interventions have not reduced but increased number of problems.
The challenges of accommodating a growing human population on these ecologically distinctive islands seem intractable. The obvious reaction is to restrict or reduce the population, but these are not viable options. Means must be found to manage a larger residential and transient (including tourist) population. Conventional approaches to building form, urban design and planning controls are trivial and ineffective. Recent platitudinous approaches to more sensitive settlements on the islands are demonstrably irrelevant, the results ineffectual. Thus we have sought an alternative framing of the challenge to model a response. The Complex Adaptive System approach, engaged by the Galapagos Science Center in its work on the ecosystem and economy of the islands, offers this alternative. In this studio we will use the outcomes of an exercise conducted in the context of previous design studios in which propositions for possible future urban development were explored informed by CAS theory. We will use computational tools developed in this studio to analyse and use data to inform propositional change.
We will start with assumption that with increase of population demands on the water, energy, recourses, and food will increase as well. All the existing problems will magnify and the damage to the environment will intensify. The unique environment of Galapagos may be lost forever and its most important source of income, the natural habitat, will disappear. Therefore, we will start with looking at the built environment through 6 different lenses: water, food, waste, energy, construction materials, waste and knowledge. We will use data collected by students in the past few years and try to build interactive models that will help us to develop proposal for sustainable and resilient future of Galapagos.
Students who take this studio will have the opportunity to join the next subject and travel with us to Galapagos during the winter break as Study Abroad Program and see how their tools and proposals can improve the situation on the island.
Studio Outcomes
To develop critical and creating design thinking.
To develop the ability to put forward, and provide convincing arguments for unconventional and provocative architectural and urban design propositions.
To explore new architectural and urban design theories and to test their effectiveness in positively intervening with the natural environment.
To investigate contemporary multi-disciplinary theories of form, space, order and aesthetics, and to test their relevance.
To engage with concepts and possibilities of ‘big data’ and develop skills to use large data sets to directly inform design concepts and decision making in innovative and meaningful ways.
Communicate a complex design vision in a clear and professional manner.
Evaluate design decisions against industrial, environmental and site conditions, building scale and general principles of sustainability.
Studio Leaders
Prof Justyna Karakiewicz, PhD, AA Dip, BArch (Hon), RIBA, FRSA, currently Professor at University of Melbourne. Previously Associate Professor at HKU Department of Architecture, trained as an architect at the Architectural Association. Justyna taught at Architectural Association, Bartlett School of Architecture of the University College, The University of Hong Kong and many other institutions around the world. Justyna’s expertise lies primarily in high-density urbanism in which she completed her doctoral thesis at RMIT. She has exhibited work at Venice Biennale (3 times) Royal Academy (London, 8 times), New York, Kyoto, Barcelona and some twenty other venues. Her numerous successes in international competitions include First Prizes in: Gateway to Mecca (1979); Crystal Palace Solar Housing Competition (1981: built); Dunkerque Waterfront (1992: partially built); Swansea Working Men’s Club (1995: built); awarded Prize for a drawing of a Work of Architecture awarded at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2005); Honorable Mention and prize in Asia Front Village 39th Central Glass International Architectural Design Competition sponsored by Shinkenchikusha Co., Ltd., Prize (2004 ); and Honorable Mention in Modern Saudi House Design Competition (2004) and many others.
Reading & Reference
Allen, P. 1997 Cities and Regions as Self-Organizing Systems: Model of Complexity. London: Taylor and Francis.
Batty, M, & Marshall, S 2009, 'The evolution of cities: Geddes, Abercrombie and the new physicalism', TPR: Town Planning Review, 80, 6, pp. 551-574.
De Landa, M. 1999 “Nonlinear Development of Cities” in Eco-Tec: Architecture of the In- Between, Amerigo Marras, ed. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
D’Orso, M. Plundering Paradise. New York: Harper Collins.
Holland, J. H. (1992) Complex Adaptive Systems, Daedalus, 121, 1, 17-30.
Holland, J. H. (1995) Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, Basic Books, New York.
Odum, H. T. (1983) Systems Ecology: An Introduction, John Wiley and Sons, New York
Pickett, S.T.A., M.L.Cadenasso, and B. McGrath eds. 2015. Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design, New York: Springer
Zizek, S. 2012 Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. New York: Verso
ST1/10 Thursday 9AM-12, MSD Room 237
ST2/10 Thursday 12:15-3:15PM, MSD Room 237