Design
Before
Extinction
Author: Brendan Cole Buchanan Dee Course: Graduate Project, Masters of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Committee: Adam Rysanek, Fionn Byrne, Tijana Vujosevic, Jennifer Cutbill
UBC SALA / 2021
The Holocene Extinction is upon us—species around the world are dying at an extraordinary rate, earning the designation of a mass extinction. In the expansion of our own habitat, humans have transformed the planet according to our anthropocentric ethics and desires, wielding the power to both improve and destroy places around us. The built environment is a record of our treatment of other species, a collective project shaped by ideologies, aesthetics, and economies. Architecture and landscape architecture are complicit in the phenomenon of extinction, responsible for normalizing the designs and ideals that have contributed to the decline of other species and cultures. In this project, the relationship of the built environment to biodiversity is investigated at three historical sites of conflict. Each history is followed by an intervention presented as a critique of existing practices, speculating as how to redesign the built environment in response to mass extinction.
> Reef
> Aquarium
> Seawall