Metabolizing Scape Dynamics: Hybrid Urban Design Approaches beyond Anthropocentric Aims

This design research course explores the possibilities of activating the extended dataset of urban and natural space in search of new directions in urban design beyond anthropocentric views. The cities of Ioannina and Preveza and the wider regions of Lake Pamvotis (2023) and Amvrakikos Gulf (2022) are its focus. The natural and the urban landscape consist of a unified field where the human factor often exacerbates phenomena of environmental crisis, with consequences for humans themselves. A city’s sustainability presupposes that the urban activities are compatible with its eco-social context, and is achieved through reciprocity, negotiations, and mutual concessions, rather than disconnected or linear manipulations. These considerations summarize the theoretical basis of this pilot course advertising a hybrid urban-and-natural approach that ‘metabolises’ the energies of space’s various participating elements. The elements of the built, semi-structured and natural landscape are organized along the following themes: 1. Biodiversity, 2. Building stock, 3. Water reserves, 4. Economy, production, tourism, and 5. Topography. New relationships between human-made and natural elements emerge, as complex influences and cooperations of the broader ecosystem equally hosting its members, including humans. The approach is based on SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analyses and dynamic simulations of natural and urban phenomena. It delves into mechanisms of the urban and the suburban landscape, organically linked to its geographical, natural, and cultural setting. The notion of ‘topos’ is reconstructed into a multidimensional system-field supporting occupations, actions, and linkages internally and externally as heterogeneous components that pose interdisciplinary challenges for different scales in architecture and urban design.