unit-code
How can architecture strengthen the bond between people and place, and the placelessness of homogenised cities? Australian environmental thinker Glenn Albrecht, seeing the links between human and ecosystem health, coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to articulate the emotional and behavioural consequences of climate change. ‘Eco-anxiety’ of this kind is an emerging phenomenon, triggered by both small-scale and global environmental challenges. This year PG11 focused on environment and future-thinking, imagined a new vocabulary for Generation Anthropocene and asked how architecture can respond to the emotional and environmental effects of the climate crisis.
Situating ourselves within a global context, this line of questioning has been interrogated through projects sited across the globe. Cities and their architecture are never finished and are by their nature experimental. With this in mind, we initially drew inspiration from Boston, USA, focusing on four stories in which interrelating narratives and histories gave both a provocation and a site for investigation. By exposing the complexity of human/environmental relationships, the tales provide a physical, cultural and political context for the unit’s work. In response to readings of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, published in 1887, utopian thinking is understood as an extrapolation of the present, emerging out of a longing for change. What models for future life can be imagined in the 21st century?
In addition, the unit was also inspired by the radical transformations of Boston’s physical geography to enable the city’s rapid economic expansion. The draining of marshland and flattening of hills allowed the creation of territories for institutional, domestic and ecclesiastical development, alongside the Emerald Necklace of public parks, which emerged as the public realms of Bellamy’s vision. We then asked how future transformations in society and the natural environment might be reflected in the built environment.
These research strands have been adapted and challenged across the unit, resulting in a wide variety of proposals connecting people, place and the environment.