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Kinship
noun
1. blood relationship.
2. a sharing of characteristics or origins.
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(Man-Nahāta, n.d.)
After I came up with my idea of a space that benefits nature I found a very interesting project by Neri Oxman called MAN-NAHĀTA (Man-Nahāta, n.d.). OXMAN look at Manhattan's pre-1600s landscapes that were rich in nature. It had a "diverse, natural landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, wetlands, salt marshes, and streams." Not only that, but it was also rich in ecological communities and had 55 of them on a 20 square miles big territory. "What is now a human-centered cultural hub was once a nature-centric econiche, home to mammals, birds, fish, plants, fungi, and bacteria. It supported more ecological communities per acre than Yellowstone, more native plant species per acre than Yosemite, and more birds than the great Smoky Mountains." When I hear these explanations of a landscape that I only can imagine I can't understand how it has completely drowned in what today is called the "concrete jungle". But nature is hitting back again and is threatening the city with "higher temperatures, increasingly frequent heavy downpours, and a rising sea level that will further increase storm surges and coastal flooding." That is why Oxman proposes a plan "where the past is re-embodied in the future." (Man-Nahāta, n.d.)
"If humanity is to survive and thrive, we must rethink our relationship with Nature."
The idea is to create a circular timeline where the human-centric biosphere grows into a distributed Nature-centric landscape. Slowly over time, the design will take over and what were skyscrapers will become hills and the streets will become valleys. "Importantly, the emergence of these forms is driven only by the time evolution of a geometric operator acting on the shapes iteratively, thereby connecting geometry and growth through an algorithm." ... "Across four centuries, Man-Nahāta—an imagined urban future—experiences emergence, growth, decay, and rebirth as a built-grown singularity." It will be shaped according to "four essential seeds—shelter, nutrients, energy, society—self-organize into a layered circular system. The emerging city is designed by and informed by its dynamic environment. Sunlight and airflow shape its morphology, the water line defines its boundaries, and the hilly landscape underlies its grid." (Man-Nahāta, n.d.) The city will produce resources to be able to meet the needs of its occupants. A kinship will be formed between different life forms.
The idea is to let nature shape the emerging city, what once was a busy human-centred place will regrow above the city and the hills and valleys will be a memory of the city below. So the new landscape will be a new cycle of humanity. In my view a chance to not destroy nature which has been growing for hundreds of years.
References:
Man-Nahāta. (n.d.). Man-Nahāta. https://oxman.com/projects/man-nahata
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