Post-Anthropocene_2.0: Alternative Scenarios through Nature/Computing Coalition Applicable in Architecture

Abstract

Concepts of the Post-Anthropocene often depict dystopian futures where land is occupied by giant machines performing repetitive tasks and replicating and fixing other machines. This speculation amplifies what is to be today’s solution for the efficient management of available assets, supported by hardware, software, and Artificial Intelligence technologies. However, it also portrays a dehumanising future where Earth has totally been succumbed to the machinic dogma, and for which architecture is no longer made for people. In response to this unsettling scenario, an alliance between nature as a source of references and computing explaining its systemic logic is considered, offering a pathway to reharmonize architecture’s scope with the greater ecology. Moreover, semantic analogies are drawn between holistic models of physical space and nature’s operational and organisational principles developed since early modernism. This sums up to a paradigm shift that employs cross-disciplinary concepts, cultural knowledge, political ideologies, technology and computing altogether to respond to critical challenges of sustainable thinking for the Post-Anthropocene introduced in architecture’s core discourse.