Sympoiesis

Ecological culture is becoming increasingly prominent in the design of the city today. It is the pivot that enables us to articulate new ways of looking, proceeding and operating, generating a set of ways of producing in and for the environmental city. How can ecological culture colour, inform and renew project culture ?

Sympoiesis comes from the Greek ποίησις / poíēsis, ‘creation, production’ and the prefix σύν / sún ‘with, together’. Poíēsis refers to the study of the potentialities inscribed in a given situation, heralding a new creation. Literally then, sympoiesis is by consequence a making-with or making-together. A making that is not be the autonomous affirmation of a vision, but the revelation of potentialities or the materialization of an as yet unrevealed existence.

The transformations that our societies and environments are currently going through are jeopardizing our way of being in the world. As such they challenge our capacity to set out projects or, more concretely, to produce prospective visions and to anchor tangible ambitions in them. This context encourages us to imagine new ways of acting that enable us to integrate uncertainty. We must go beyond torment – not undergo – and invent actions capable of fitting into the climate regime that is taking shape. Moving from a system of autonomous objects to one of related objects opens up new perspectives on interactions, forms and processes. Organized around these three chapters, the exhibition shows how ecological culture can colour, inform and renew project culture.