Events
Workshop

Homo Aquaticus

This workshop was a starting point for the Split and their contribution to the SUrF project - to test, enhance and improve existing design approaches, methods, tools and techniques (based on the “Mediterranean Speculative Approach"). The workshop used speculations on the future to achieve direct actions in the present, based on local community participation and collaboration (in the context of climate changes crisis).

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Homo Aquaticus in Split (Foto: Ivica Mitrović).

A series of lectures and presentations were organised to inform the views of participants. They included lectures by the Croatian Pavilion curators Mia Roth & Tonči Čerina, social science researcher Gennaro Ascione from Naples and marine biologist Mladen Šolić, critical city tour of Split by sociologist Darija Ivošević and the “Homo Aquaticus” exhibition visit at the Split Museum of Fine Arts by Ivica Mitrović and Oleg Šuran.

1Process

In order to tackle the issue of sea and human relations, we suggest a methodology that goes back and forth from: design artefacts ⟷ landscape.

Such methodology would orient the design process to constantly evaluate ideation in regard to the materiality of systems. The goal was to ask the following questions during the design process: How to understand designed artefacts related to the sea in the lens of space? How to understand aquatic space in the lens of designed artefacts? What kind of relationships does this reveal or generate? In what ways design could address questions considering climate change and other related crises? 

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Homo Aquaticus in Split (Foto: Jasminka Babić).

The workshop gathered 23 participants from seven European countries – mainly MA students and young practitioners. Four groups composed of four to nine people were formed, and each group was invited to choose from one of six topics, which aimed to orientate the investigations and the design process.

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Workshop topics.

To help guide their ideation process, the groups were invited to play a double-entry game, which consists of linking an artefact to its landscape, and vice versa, by choosing what they thought would be a relevant axis of problematisation (cultural, political, climatic). In the following example, “The Aquatists” group first focused on a water ball game called “Picigin” originating from Split, Croatia. They reflected upon how such a game could be played in the entire region and adapted regarding the relationship people have with local bodies of water (rivers, lakes, coasts, seas). Eventually, they extended their reflection to a wider system of artefacts concerned with the utopian idea of local and regional identity.

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Process (Valentin Graillat and Olivier Troff).

2Outcomes

Of the six tracks proposed, the majority of the groups focused on the complex preservation and re-invention of landscape heritage and identity, with a strong shared interest in the consequences and impact of mass tourism and climate change on Split’s territory. A first group of the participants, with backgrounds in architecture and visual communication, spontaneously approached the brief from a landscape perspective (cruise ship ports, old town), gradually narrowing their attention to the creation of specific scenarios, tools, and artefacts (local events, production devices, ancient crops). Rest of the participants were more interested in initiating their projects by observing local resources or traditions. After that, they started to open up their research to a wider scale (broader region, coast & seabed), and embrace the broader system related to them.

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When the “HRSPU” group focused on the material design of port infrastructures adapted to a more ethical and sustainable tourism in Split, for instance, “The Aquatists” group instead designed a renewed immaterial culture focusing on the regional landscape. At the junction of these two material/immaterial perspectives, the work of the “Splitting Split” group was entirely based on the use of a diagram that allows us to speculate on the evolution of antique heritage and the city in the near future, according to the macro-economic and cultural choices that the city will take. Eventually, with a more focused approach, the “Redikul” Project proposed a set of artefacts, tools and methods that articulate precisely identified coastal areas in local geography, and orient bodies and gestures towards the use of a new algae for food consumption.

3Reflections

Regarding the relationship between artefacts/systems and landscapes, design and landscape design seem to have a lot to share despite their divergent methods and scale of intervention. As a consequence, the brief is a way to explore how to produce knowledge and landscape perspectives that are useful for designers. It first allows the exploration of the materiality of existing systems ⟷ artefacts, as well as it gives the opportunity for participants to precisely evaluate the scales and modalities of intervention for their projects. 

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As the workshop was condensed into less than four days, reflecting upon landscapes was more of a conceptual exercise for participants than a proper survey. The option of starting the workshop with a more local or global approach enabled participants to mobilise their own design skills and to redefine and re-constrain, in their own terms, the complexity of the aquatic space. In that way, each project initiates, at the least, a unique questioning and non-conventional understanding of the material framework that structures Split’s landscape. We like to think that experiencing such a method during longer workshops could be helpful for an in-depth landscape evaluation.

For reading more about the workshop, approach and outcomes follow this LINK