Ecology

Definition

Ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments. In this wiki it is extended from a natural-scientific discipline to a political and architectural category: Latour's "new climatic regime" reframes ecology as the condition in which Gaia — the Earth as an interconnected, responsive system — is no longer a neutral backdrop but an agent whose perturbations (climate change, the critical zone) demand architectural response. Kant, read through Morgan, provides the philosophical underpinning: his "cosmic" and holistic understanding of the world "is a necessary underpinning for any theory of sustainability, ecology and the cosmopolitan spirit." Ecology thus names both a scientific description of interdependence and a normative demand that architecture think at planetary scale.

Key Thinkers

• Bruno Latour — Gaia and the new climatic regime; the critical zone as the site of ecological politics.
• Immanuel Kant — the holistic, planetary understanding underpinning ecological theory.
• Albena Yaneva — Latour's ecological imperative for architecture.

Related Concepts

• Sustainability — the practical-normative demand ecology grounds.
• Gaia — Latour's name for the Earth as an active, responsive system.
• Cosmopolitics — the political form ecological thinking takes.
• Hybrids — ecology dissolves the nature/culture divide into hybrids.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Kant for Architects — ecology and sustainability as grounded in Kant's cosmic vision.
• Latour for Architects — Gaia and the architectural response to climate change.
• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — the interior-scale, design-programme register: ecology as "today's ecologically sensitive design philosophy" seeking "to integrate the greenscapes and natural flows" of buildings; biophilia as the attitude "that does not separate the artifice of humans from the living forms of the natural world"; and ornament's ecology made explicit — ornament's components "are free to fabricate an alternative ecology in a physical sense, which in turn engenders an alternative cosmology in a conceptual sense." Where Latour's ecology is planetary and political (Gaia, the critical zone), this register scales it to the room: the interior as the designed site where the human-nature relation is enacted through plants, water, air, and smell. The chapter's Anthropocene footnote ("the word natural is no longer applicable once we acknowledge we have entered the Anthropocene") marks the same terrain as Latour's hybrids — "nature" admitted to be already entangled with the human. See biophilia, nature-vs-culture, hybrids.
• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — a systemic-design register: ecology as the produced system's own name. The POP system — "material technical components and the organization of these components: the installation, the generated effects, the emergent conditions, and the human experiences combined into one" — "expands the system and intertwines constituencies into a coherent, if not completely self-aware, ecology." The phrase deliberately echoes Latour's ecology: constituencies (human visitors among sensors, materials, and emergent conditions) intertwined but not self-aware — an ecology designed without claiming to understand itself. Odom also extends Fuller's ecological question to the object's "broader ecologies… including makers, designers, and materials, and even the markets that drove their creation" ("How much does your building weigh?" rephrased as "What does your work produce?"). Where Garófalo-Khan's ecology is nature-cultural (biophilia), Odom's is technological-social: the designed system as its own ecology, "if not completely self-aware." See production-oriented-practices, systems-theory, nonhumans.- "Living" rooms (Brownell 2018) — the materials-fabrication register: ecology enters design practice as "the rapid convergence of technology and the natural sciences" — "a deeper knowledge about natural systems and processes is considered critical to making responsible environmental choices in design." Where Latour's ecology is planetary-political and Garófalo-Khan's biophilic-typological, Brownell's is productive: natural processes "use resources effectively and generate byproducts that may be reutilized. In this way, even natural waste is a resource for another process" — and the design consequence is "a partnership with nature – rather than traditional brute consumption of natural resources," with the designer as "director of the design experiments." The chapter's honest limit: "a comprehensive accounting of environmental, social, and economic effects has yet to be conducted." See hypernaturalization, sustainability, animal-architecture.
• Social, Spatial and Temporal Factors (Lawrence 1987/2006) — the dwelling-scale, sociological register: ecology as a mode of reflection on the house's life with its inhabitants — "When such issues are considered within ecological reflection, house and housing designs that are attuned to the dynamic processes that occur within them may be produced" (editors, p. 184). Where Latour's ecology is planetary (Gaia), Garófalo-Khan's biophilic-typological, Odom's systemic and Brownell's materials-fabricative, Lawrence's is domestic and temporal: the ecological unit is the dwelling-plus-inhabitants, the "dynamic processes" are the demographic and social changes the house undergoes, and design attunement means adaptability — the modernist kitchen/dining "aesthetic resolution" named as the case that failed it. See habit, temporality, flexible-interior, housing.
• source-notes/baudrillard-1975-the-mirror-of-production
• source-notes/marinic-2018-why-this-why-now