NATURE DOESN'T EXIST

| Vertical Design Studio | Spring 2012 |

| Cornell University | Instructors: Kevin Pratt with Marco Poletto + Claudia Pasquero |

As human impact on the world’s biosphere reaches critical levels, we should recognize and accept the fact that “nature no longer exists”; at least not as that untamed plane of reference where forces re-circulate in a balanced and harmonious way; in the words of Slavoj Zizek, nature is crazy, catastrophic and brutal. Such acceptance will help us avoiding the contemporary cultural pitfall promoted by what we should define as “ecologic ideology”. At the same time it will liberate a much more radical attitude towards the development of new models of transformation of the environment, new design practices for the reconfiguration of the city and the role of architecture in this process. Agenda: This studio embraced radical attitude by adopting an experimental approach to what we call systemic architecture; we substituted the picturesque with the cybernetic, the mechanic with the bio-digital and the compositional with the algorithmic. Brief: Our brief was to develop new greenhouses prototypes for the urban environment, i.e. a “framed” ecology where beautification, leisure and biological life share space, time and resources.

| STUDENT TEAM: Sonny Xu, Mercedes Cuvi, Jose Miguel Tijerina |