Mothering Nature

Heidy Sekardini October 3, 2024

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Team

Name: Heidy Sekardini

Instagram: @heidysekar

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidy-sekardini/

Nationality: Indonesia

Institution / Company: Universitas Indonesia

This project explores the evolution of adaptation as an approach in symbiotic architecture, employing interactions between humans and nature through the lens of ‘Connectedness with Nature’ and symbiogenesis as basis for designing. Through a literature review, this study highlights how human evolution from a hunter-gatherer to an industrial society has shifted to the era of capitalism and the Anthropocene. This results in significant environmental domination and degradation, fueling the need to strengthen connectedness with nature. By adopting ‘Being as Nature’ as a perspective, this project argues that humans as part of a natural system can facilitate symbiotic architectural design, integrating genetic traits that support natural symbiosis through Homo botanicus. By becoming ‘Being as Nature’, Homo botanicus began the era of Mothering Nature – mothering, as a verb. By defining the genetic traits of plants in the tropical biomes, the design is developed using computational scripting to demonstrate the symbiotic architecture generated by Homo botanicus and nature. This study proposes architectural designs that not only imitate but become part of nature’s symbiogenetic processes, by extracting natural growth mechanisms. A point of view that does not see nature as a “resource” to be exploited but to be guided so that nature grows naturally according to its genetic traits.

Project Video:

References:

Steffen, W., Crutzen, P., & McNeill, J. (2007). The anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature? Ambio, 36, 614-621. https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:TAAHNO]2.0.CO;2

Bulatović, K., Bunjak, K., & Persiani, S. (2016). Symbiotic architecture between science and utopia. Barragan-Jason, G., de, Mazancourt, C., Parmesan, M. C., Singer, M. C., & Loreau, M. (2021). Human–nature connectedness as a pathway to sustainability: A global meta-analysis. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/CONL.12852