Enacting Gregory Bateson’s Ecological Aesthetics in Architecture and Design

社会和生态转型要求设计和建筑领域开发新的、更广阔的思维和行动方式，以更好地参与生态问题。本项目考察了人类学家和控制论学家格雷戈里·贝特森（Gregory Bateson, 1904-1980）的工作如何为应对这一挑战提供另一种行动框架。借鉴贝特森后期作品的关注，该项目提出了这样一个问题：在设计和建筑的背景下，什么样的思维和行为形式可以解决环境危机的特殊复杂性，在丰富的生态理念和具体情况的实际挑战之间架起桥梁？早在20世纪60年代，贝特森就认为，环境危机是由更广泛的观念危机和由此产生的组织形式危机造成的。贝特森对环境行动的零敲碎打方式进行了批评，这种批评在今天仍能引起共鸣。如果只解决那些可识别和可解决的“问题”，就只能对生态系统的一部分起作用，其不可预测的后果将波及整个生态系统。根据他们的人类学工作，贝特森指出了各种支持更全面的生态系统参与的美学实践。这种“生态美学”的理念为创造性学科开辟了新的可能性（以及挑战），有助于对环境危机做出实质性的反应，而不是主要通过技术的视角来看待环境问题。虽然贝特森的作品与建筑和设计环境之间存在许多共鸣，但参与贝特森的想法不可避免地很复杂。运用贝特森的作品不仅仅是更好地阐明其概念的问题——这些想法需要付诸实施，而不仅仅是解释。在后来的作品中，贝特森试图解决他们的思想过于复杂的特点，以更开放的方式对他们进行重新设计，通常是通过形式和内容交叉的对话形式。该项目从贝特森作品的这些方面出发，在不同的实践背景下探索、发展和批评贝特森的思想。这些包括：(1)丰富城市生态系统的原型装置；(2)贝特森概念跨生态域的传播设计映射；(3)利用前理性形式的知识来推测替代技术的未来；(4)发展新的对话模式。在这些活动中，团队将合作制作可访问的资源，如地图、插图和游戏，这些资源可以支持学生、教师、研究人员和设计和建筑从业者以新的形式参与贝特森的想法。

Social and ecological transformation requires design and architecture fields to develop new, more expansive, ways of thinking and acting that better engage questions of ecology. This project examines how the work of anthropologist and cybernetician Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) might contribute an alternative frame of action to navigate this challenge. Drawing on the concerns of Bateson's later work, the project asks: What forms of thinking and acting can work through the particular complexities of environmental crises in the contexts of design and architecture, bridging between rich ecological ideas and the practical challenges of concrete situations?As early as the 1960s, Bateson argued that the environmental crisis resulted from a broader crisis of ideas and the forms of organisation that resulted from this. Bateson criticised piecemeal approaches to environmental action in ways that continue to resonate today. By addressing only those 'problems' that are identifiable and solvable, one acts only on parts of an ecosystem, with unpredictable consequences that reverberate through the whole. Drawing on their anthropological work, Bateson pointed to various aesthetic practices that support fuller ecosystemic engagements. This idea of an 'ecological aesthetics' opens up new possibilities (as well as challenges) for creative disciplines in contributing substantial responses to environmental crises, in contrast to where environmental concerns are seen primarily through the lens of technology. While there are a number of resonances between Bateson's work and the contexts of architecture and design, engaging Bateson's ideas is inevitably complex. Mobilising Bateson's work is not simply a matter of better articulating its concepts - these are ideas that need to be enacted not just explained. In later work, Bateson attempted to address the overly complex character of their ideas, reworking them in ways that were more open to practical contexts, often through forms of dialogue where form and content intersect. Taking its point of departure from these aspects of Bateson's work, the project explores, develops, and critiques Bateson's ideas in varied contexts of practice. These include: (1) a prototype installation for enriching urban eco-systems; (2) communication design mapping of Bateson's concepts across ecological domains; (3) storytelling that engages with pre-rational forms of knowing to speculate on alternative technology futures; and (4) the development of new modes of dialogical engagement. Coming out of these activities, the team will work collaboratively to produce accessible resources such as maps, illustrations, and games that can support new forms of engagement with Bateson's ideas amongst students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners in design and architecture.