This studio aims to look at the intersection between urban development and ecological infrastructure. How can we as architects, landscape architects and urban planners develop projects enabling adequate forms of coexistence with other living beings within the urban environment?

Architecture expands the man-made territory while ecology protects other life forms from human malevolence. Despite their relevance, those two modus operandi seem on their own somehow ill-equipped to answer the complexity of our present condition, in which the construction industry is one of the world’s most polluting business and urban sprawl a key factor to biotope decrease as well as species decline. To respond to this task, we might find interesting tools in ecological thinking. While coexistence defines the relation of two or more species living together in the same natural environment, the way those two species interact in that given habitat is described by the principals of community ecology (Odum & Barret, 2005). This relation can be harmful, neutral, or benefic for one or both species, respectively described as commensalism and mutualism relationships. We will during that studio specifically focus on the principles of mutualism, i.e. a win-win relationship, and consider how to shape a livable city, not only for man but also for its companion species (Haraway, 2016).