Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

By using the cyborg as a structural tool to analyze certain aspects of human interaction with what can be perceived as landscape or landscape architectural elements, this thesis seeks to explore the concept of the cyborg landscape in order to place human practice in the context of postmodern ideas of the end of true nature. Ever since human kind has externalized evo-lution by using tools and extending the body with technological inventions, we have also taken our surroundings out of their natural trajectory. Everything we do that is conditioned by the use of technology is altering that which we perceive as nature and natural. Since we have been doing this for millennia we have of course also altered our surroundings by the influence of technology.

This thesis uses three examples of landscape or landscape architectural elements that are conditioned by the integration of technology to explore this practice through a postmodern model of analysis based on the concept and basic premises of the cyborg, or the cybernetic organism. A cybernetic organism is in short an organism that has functioning technological parts integrated into its system. By way of popular culture this idea has been given a set of basic rules and an identity, which has transformed into a theoretical way of approaching phenomena in our reality.

The three examples that are the basis for this thesis are in order or scale: artificially illumi-nated vegetation, vertical hydroponics with integrated greywater treatment and technolo-gized agriculture. The thesis seeks to find the inherent strengths and weaknesses within these examples to try and find whether or not there could be any common factors that unite these examples. The conclusion is that even though the examples show a great amount of strengths and weaknesses that are attributed to their technologization, all cyborg landscapes are so different in their basic nature that merely one strength and one weakness are a com-mon factor among them. All cyborg landscapes can offer humanity something that they could never do without the integration of technology and without the meddling of the human hand they would all in different ways be terminated.