spool special issue
spool
SPOOL is an open access journal in the field of architecture and the built environment that revolves around different threads, from which it derives its name. Treating the topics as threads within one journal allows SPOOL to focus on the interrelationship between the fields. One of the threads is the landscape metropolis.
Triggered by the profound changes of the Anthropocene, the complexity of the metropolitan landscape asks for reorientation when addressing physical space. We need to start understanding spaces as animated worlds in which humans live entangled, in dependencies with other actors like waters, soils, animals, microbes, plants, and technology.
How can designers and design disciplines reposition their roles towards this more-than-human, and how does it change the alignment of spatial interventions-the processes of designing in landscapes? In this SPOOL issue ‘Representing the More-Than-Human,’ we inquire about the role of visual representations in this reorientation: How can drawings, and the act of drawing, mappings, and the act of mapping, exhibitions and the act of exhibiting help to practice this approximation towards what we are part of - the more-than-human?
The issue shows a wide range of directions and approaches of representation (e.g., hand-drawn mappings, multidimensional diagrammatic representations, filmic approaches). It discusses how different foci and methods can bring new ideas and aspects to be involved in more-than-human worlds. Various topics are still open to discussion, such as further investigations into design processes and the spatial implementation of these attempts, e.g., through guidelines or governance approaches. All articles introduce aspects that reflect and enrich design processes, ranging from orienting these processes by giving ideas on how to rethink space through representations to reflecting on how standard methods of spatial representation are insufficient in meeting these dimensions. Further, the relationship between tools, and their strengths and limits, is shown. Their different abilities in enabling approachability, complex narrations or the depth of rethinking epistemologies show a large diversity.