Pad (Dec 2023)
Biotopia. The Design of Decentered Domesticities
Abstract
Although the term habitat represents one of the most crucial ecological concepts for describing the relationship between some species and their environment, it is also one of the vaguest. This is why, in the past few years, it has often been replaced by more specific ones, which could clearly identify the relationships at stake. This is the case, for instance, of the term biotope, which recently, with the increasing awareness of ecosystem interconnectivity, has taken more and more relevance in comparison to the previous one. Whereas a habitat, in fact, is the sum of the physical and biotic resources of a place that allows the survival and reproduction of a particular species, a biotope represents the habitat not of a specific population, but of a whole biotic and sympoietic community. A feature that perfectly describes the characteristics of a new design approach, generally called more-than-human, here analyzed from both a theoretical and methodological standpoint, which today, to tackle major environmental challenges, focuses on building architectures in which multiple species can find some terms for cohabitation. And which, therefore, not only entails addressing a new class of subjects but also challenges the role of architects and other practitioners in this field by requiring new ways of designing that enhance interspecies coexistence and collaboration.
