I woke up. I stood up. Opened the window and started my day. I went to the kitchen. I prepared my tea. I worked. I left home. Came back. It started raining. The sound of the rain. The rain. I prepared dinner. I ate. Turned off the lights and went to bed. Another day.
I woke up. I opened my eyes. Looked at the ceiling. I stood up and streched. Opened the window. Blue sky and sunny day. Walked on wood. Walked on tiles. Opened the sink, filled the boiler. Water flushing. Water heating. Water boiling. Water poured. I worked and tiped. The sound. The speed. Left home. Used the stairs. The rythm. Came back. It rained. And rained. The sound. The smell. The intensity. The rain. Started cooking. Cutting. Boiling. Frying. Flipping. Flipping. The smell. The smoke. The taste. Lights down. Shadows on. The wind. The sounds. The infinite lights. Walked on tiles. Walked on wood. I dreamed. A good day.
This project enables the appreciation of different scales of activity within a site (which I have called “universes”) whose concurrent but distinct sets of events help us appreciate that anthropocentrism focuses only on the same level, while nature operates at different scales in different ways. While distinct, the activities within these scales are not incompatible. The role of the arch-scope is to create a way of bringing different scales into proximity as a starting point for thinking about how we design our houses. If we start to conceive living spaces through an arch-scope maybe we can design better habitats, which are able to keep an eye on all the multiple events that are important for a positive impact of a body being in a space.
The use of the set of instruments present in this research – arch-scope, dome-scope and room-scope – made me more aware of my surroundings. Trying to find what was the right angle to reveal things and to guess where interesting events were happening.
Look. Stop. Look further. Pay attention to those things you never saw before. Register. Learn. Look at the details. Look at the transformations. Once we know what is happening around us, once we know things about our environment, our relationship with it changes. It changes us. We feel differently. We can never again not pay attention to it. We cannot deny it. This is the importance of the experiments and changing the habit of looking. We no longer can say that we do not see it, we know we have a blindfold, and it is up to us to remove and confront that all our decisions have consequences in nature, and we have to live with that. Once we work with nature, it gives us something in return and we must have the instruments and the courage to speak back. It is a dialogue. A reciprocal one. We have to find our way back to it. We must learn nature’s language and communicate with it. Otherwise, we are behind.
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If we look again at nature, learn, and we are aware of the events around us, not only architecture and design benefit from it, but also, we as humans. Connection with the space we inhabit, the city, the world. Looking at different scales in juxtaposition to each other changes our thinking to one that is closer to the way nature thinks and acts. A designer that has no blindfold towards these transformations, is a designer that can talk nature’s language and is a step further leaving behind the anthropocentrism.
Nowadays design occurs in an anthropocentric level, we design in a human scale, even though there are microbes, dust around us and the sky, the trees, among other things outside our living spaces. All elements of our world. Humans always try to control what surrounds them, yet design in relation to space is not necessarily based on control. This does not mean that there is no control, or that we as designers should not bring our ideas and agency into the world. When designing with space, with nature, we do not have the final word, we only open a negotiation with the world because it always responds.
Is the act of design one of control? Or is it one of empathy and awareness? Designers should acknowledge the many experiences and spaces to become more empathetic. The arch-scope tries to add to this battle and invite to think differently, invites to new ethics of design. Architects and designers should move towards an ecological engagement with space. This thesis tries to find the position of the architect within new ethics of ecological design through multiple scales. Being better neighbors than rulers.
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