Modular Ecology
MODULAR ECOLOGY
Is a multi-disciplinary design construct.
A design methodology based on mobility and metabolism.
It's inherent in all scales of design.
It is iterating the the concepts of economy and ecology, finding the common strand of efficiency and growth and expansion.
Modular Ecology was first introduced at Parsons Design the New School. Huy Bui led the course and assisted 11 senior product design students to develop an idea based on the curricula.
The film is part of the world's first educational webportal on the Anthropocene, commissioned by the Planet Under Pressure conference, and developed and sponsored by
anthropocene.info
The Earth has entered a new age―the Anthropocene―in which humans are the most powerful influence
on global ecology. Confirmed by Geologist, on August 30th 2016.
“Nearly Half of all species in 100 years will be gone,” … “When you think of mass extinction, you think of a major catastrophe, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This time, humanity is the meteor.”
Louie Psihoyos, Oscar Filmmaker and Director of Racing Extinction.
Climate Change is the biggest existential crisis human civilization has ever known. Given these dire circumstances, we must alter our perspective of the only planet known to support life, Earth. We look to visionaries who put ideas before us, to tackle these issues.
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody“
R.Buckminster Fuller
Modular Ecology, will use the metaphor of a spaceship and create a catalog of tools and products that support
the vessel. The semester will focus on two systems, modularity and ecology. The first phase of the
semester will be based on initial activation / research to explore the nature of modular systems.
Modular structures are also increasingly being recognized as a way of communicating, where theaim is not to construct a universal principle but to facilitate interplay between different systems
Rethinking The Modular
The core of the studio will explore the meaning of ecology, and how this process influences the way
we think about design and making. We will explore the flow of light, water, air, earth and
how each can synthesize into tools, products and ideas. We will look at the Whole Earth Catalog as key source, a
counterculture publication produced in the late 60s and early 70s, that cataloged tools and products to
empower new ways of living and being.
*In 1968, Stewart Brand founded the Whole Earth Catalog. Brand’s goals were to make a variety of tools accessible to newly dispersed counterculture communities, back-to-the-land households, and innovators in the fields of technology, design, and architecture, and to create a community meeting-place in print. The catalog quickly developed into a wide-ranging reference for new living spaces, sustainable design, and experimental media and community practices. After only a few years of publication it exploded in popularity, becoming a formidable cultural phenomenon.
Whole Earth Catalog, spring 1969
“You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give
them a tool to use which will lead them to think differently.”
R. Buckminster Fuller