Biocentrism and Modernism

2017

Global warming, mass extinction of animal and plant species, desertification of enormous tracts of land, the destruction of rainforests and boreal forests, and the death of the coral reefs are pressing issues of our time. Since the period of the waning of Modernism over the past forty years, we have become increasingly aware of the advent of an environmental crisis of almost unimaginable proportions. Given also the breathtaking advances in biology, particularly genetics, over the past few decades, and hotly debated political issues such as the ethics of stem-cell research, we are increasingly reminded of issues of the definition and control of life and the central role played by the life sciences. With the requirement, therefore, to rethink our relationship with what we have since the Enlightenment termed the "natural," the editors think it imperative that we gain a better understanding of the ways in which attitudes towards "nature" and "life" shaped our culture and in which ways they helped form modernity and engender Modernism. It is widely assumed that Modernist culture had little interest in or even awareness of this looming crisis, or even of "nature" as such. Yet a closer examination of almost any genre of Modernist artistic and cultural production reveals an active interest in the categories of "life," the "organic," and even the destruction of the environment in modernity. While as citizens, we might take an active role in dealing with today's environmental problems, as historians, it is not necessarily our job to address them, but it is our role to address the history of the developing awareness of these crises. Clearly, the closely related histories of biology and the life sciences on the one hand, and of environmentalism on the other, are central to this task. However, cultural history, including its components such as visual studies, art and architectural history and the history of urban planning, also has an important role to play in this regard, particularly within a context in which there has been such wilful ignorance of an aspect of our common cultural inheritance. A denial of an awareness of our place in "nature" among the Moderns may act as a justification for

This article redresses an oversight in current eco-theory that offers no means for revising still-persistent conceptions of nature and the natural. It proposes an ecologizing mode of analysis as one corrective. Throughout the essay is an attempt to redeem the human, the artificial, and with them, the city. The argument discovers along the way that in order to profess its non-existence, one must name and thus reify nature, a linguistic curiosity that makes clearer the extent of nature’s ideological reach. This reflexive foil should be taken into consideration by those who find the persistence of nature troubling to the future of eco-theory and eco-awareness.

In: Scott, J. (ed). Transdiscourse 2: Turbulence and Reconstruction, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 121-138., 2016

In this chapter an artist and a natural scientist explore the turbulences that disrupt our traditional ideas about nature, the relationship between nature and humans, and how nature might be imagined and shaped in the future. Our goal is not a nostalgic attempt to restore the past nor to naively endorse a replacement of nature by technology or through some other means, but to nurture a discourse that might affect our view of the "natural." We offer a dual approach: first, a discussion of new concepts of nature and the shaping of it, based on recent thinking in ecology, conservation and in art and design. Second, we touch on historical metaphors or notions that attempt to describe current attitudes towards nature like ecologist Nigel Dudley who asserts that we need to understand how ecological function, resilience and persistence occur in natural and cultural ecosystems by a re-focus on the "authenticity in nature" (Dudley 2011). Our own approach is to build knowledge from trans-disciplinary sources, a methodology that considers humans as part of nature not as a disturbance from the outside. We ask, what are the ongoing turbulences in nature and some of the different disciplinary perspectives on nature itself? What specific metaphors or ideas can attempt to define new ways of engaging with nature? The chapter ends with a discussion of "The Grand Redesign of Nature."

Journal of Architectural/Planning Research and Studies (JARS)

All arts can serve as an inspiration of innovation ideas for landscape architectural design as well as other built environmental design disciplines. In 1960s, environmental art originated with aiming to rebel against the art gallery or museum by creating innovative art using natural elements setting on an outdoor location. The art is taken in various forms such as large sculptural artworks and, also, the installation art for a specific site, etc. Several artist scholars such as Rosalind Krauss (1979) and Spyros Papapetros & Julian Rose (2014) marked that there are no specific principles or general agreement or specific theory in terms of the approaches to exploring landscapes entangled with the art. However, within broad terrain of practice of the environmental art, this research attempted to provide core creative thoughts applied to the art, which can be divided into 6 themes including 1) Modernism 2) Postmodernism, 3) Genius loci or spirit of place, 4) concepts of eighteenth-centu...

esse arts + opinions, 2016

This study is based on the proposal of Christian Thomas, who sees Ernst May as a pioneer of ecological architecture in early modernism. This eco-modern construction style bends to the rules of modern aesthetic, but with an additional ecological flare. The study turns to the work of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer as the protagonists of an early modern aesthetic to show how early modernity reflects the developments of modern architecture and urban development in an ambivalent and critical way. This criticism, however, reaches greater depths, than the resource consciousness of Mays could in order to satisfy their demands and dispel their concerns. May's work thus remains within the realm of modernism, in which man himself becomes a building material. Ecological aesthetics therefore pose fundamental questions, which are not discussed in Thomas's essay.

Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019

This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlighting underlying tensions and problematic conceptions about nature in the Modern West. This history differs from broader theories of sustainable design in that I focus specifically on design’s relationship with nature. I review various attempts to design with nature in past and recent history, with attention to how design and research are still embedded in a Western conception of our relationship with nature inherited from the Scientific Revolution. Despite aspirations of designers to connect emotionally, philosophically and functionally with the natural world, nature remains subjugated: an ‘other’. I argue that with each ‘new’ approach to designing with nature from the Romantic Movement in the late 19th century, through to contemporary design and current design theory, designers inadvertently continue Modernist and colonialist power relationships that place humans at the top of a hierarchy, with nature at the bottom. These conditions are beginning to change as designers explore ecological theory beyond mainstream influences and as they engage with embodied research in direct relationship with nature.

Cultural Geographies, 2006