This lecture is presented by Professor of Practice Eva Castro.

This is a laboratory of ideas (narratives, stories and shapes) that try to give form to alternative modes of being-together on the planet. Designers act here as strategists, writers, conceptual and morphological explorers, mapping and bringing out layers of “controversies”; forming an alternative milieu whence a new reality could germinate. We craft para-consistent fictions by tweaking some of the constitutive elements of a specific/given reality that is selected as study case to expand onto projective practices.

This studio follows the challenging task of rethinking the area that circles around “South China Sea”, its geopolitical and material ecology through the reconceptualization and design of large-scale infrastructures and localized-material assemblages. Methodologically speaking we seek areas of fragile ecologies, where the ocean’s rising levels are beyond a hypothetical threat in the long term, but already an ongoing reality and project possible -and unforeseen futures.

We understand “design” as a process to fabricate processes —strategic/tactical, resilient in the short term and directed in the long run.

We understand the territory not as the material surface controlled by national sovereignties and private agents but as a re-combinable network of agents.

We aim at implementing “ecological infrastructures” as the main vehicle to introduce new narratives within the territory’s interstices, envisaging strategies that will dwell on issues of connectivity, political-geographical adjacencies and temporal conditions.