Luisa Ferreira Martins
Architectural Design Crossovers
From Oil to Soil: Time-space speculations for ecological regeneration in operational landscapes
The project addresses ecological degradation in operational landscapes as a result of the narrative of progress and development in the Global South. It investigates Cubatão’s composite landscapes and, aided by soft codes such as backcasting and scenario-thinking, seeks to foster a synergetic coexistence between agents (whether human, extra-human or abiotic). Given their diverse cultural, technological and cosmological experiences, agents in this proposed assemblage can contribute to a commoning agenda focused on the safekeeping of the estuarine ecosystem, the economic welfare of inhabitants and the reparation of toxicity to a level where it no longer impairs any form of life. The project challenges conventions of the discipline by rejecting rigid projections and representations by designing for and through social and material parameters rather than for a specific site and by renouncing sole authorship of the proposal. The result is a scaleless and layered machinic assemblage, which is at the same time grounded and dispersed by the flows of information and transformation it entails, enabling its generation and resonation through different frames of space and time.