Architecture in the Age of the Anthropocene

Our presentation here is a result of two particular Architectural experiments which we have conducted in 2016. Our proposal for the Green Food Development Center in Shenzhen, China, and our proposal for the Kaunas Science Museum in Lithuania, were both attempts to generate Architectural hybrids which are both artificial and natural. Unlike similar attempts in the past, which sought to reinstate a ceasefire with the Earth, we were looking now for a way to define new relationships, characterized by structures and tectonic language that merge, blend and unify. We are in a search for a new harmony in which Architecture and Nature can be experienced as one.

Our Architectural heritage always taught us to rely on orders that are based on mathematics, geometry and technical feasibility. Meaningful Architecture has always emerged when a particular structure could be simultaneously seen as a particular tectonic formation in time and space in a concrete location, while at the same time exist in a universal field of consciousness.

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Being aware of that, we began exploring possible relationships between structural language and the formations of nature. Initially, we relied on the Cartesian grid ingrained in our minds as a progressive matrix of our consciousness. However, gradually we developed ways to relax the structural grid and morph into more organic and curvilinear geometries. The relatively neutral quality of the geometry of the Cartesian grid, enabled us to relax and pronounce its presence as needed. We proposed extremely simple structures with clean rational linear layout in plan and curvilinear articulations in section to allow our structures to blend with the topography of the "natural" surroundings.

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We want to introduce a new harmonious condition in which, man, machine and nature coexist.  Our structures, in their exteriority, are nothing but landscapes; in their interiority however, there's a created space which blends the two, both physically and imaginary.