Handling Multiple Ecologies in Architectural Design

In light of the many challenges of resource scarcity, climate change, rapid urbanization and changing social patterns facing societies today, main stream architecture remains remarkably 'resilient' to conceptual innovation regarding its nature and role in society. If the idea of open architecture, able to accommodate change over time is a necessary development in architectural conceptualization, what are the barriers and problems inherent in the present design culture, and how may these be overcome? In an educational experiment, architecture and architectural engineering students were asked to imagine that their recent housing projects had been built and occupied for 25+ years. The students were given the task to transform each other's projects according to new social programs, increased urban density and strict energy and resources use paradigms, using a design methodological framework in which they were to address liveability, environment, recyclability and energy across several architectural scales. Drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT) vocabularies to describe the process, the authors identify challenges and potentials: A need for further cross disciplinary integration remains if architects are to address the increasing demands for resource optimization and environmental performance with great precision, but the experiment also showed promises in resolving design problems with multifaceted solutions addressing social and environmental issues simultaneously. The methodological framework in which the traditional scales of relative size were combined with new scales of time, intensities and durations proved instrumental towards creating a design culture of multiple ecologies.