The city – the ultimate human domain – is an environment (re)constructed around one species. Yet it is becoming less suitable for inhabitation, even for humans, partly as a result of the very monospecies perspective it was derived from. Understanding the city as a ‘xenological condition,’ a mix of urban ecology, technology and culture, is the starting point for designing the process defined in this research as ‘urban wilding.’
Xenology, a term originating from science fiction, is defined as the study of alien culture and biology: a study of intelligent ‘others.’ In the post-anthropocentric context, xenology becomes a study of the relations between multiple sets of independent ‘intelligent agents.’ It also provides a better framework for the relationships between those different agents than the outdated dichotomy between ’natural’ and ‘artificial.’ The concept of urban wilding originates from the concept of ‘rewilding.’ Yet, while the aim of rewilding is to minimize or remove human presence from the restored ecosystem, urban wilding aims to restore biodiversity and create new ecological processes while retaining the city’s core functions.
With [A]FA Integration, I especially focused on investigating this emerging xenological model of the city from the perspective of plants: their behaviour patterns in human-transformed contexts on a full spectrum of levels of control – from spontaneous emergence on leftover structures, to being grown under a set of designed conditions in artificially constructed environments, their potential in the generation and understanding of concepts of ‘space’ and ‘nature’ (particularly within the Japanese context in which the project is set) and the technologies that could become a vital tool for the re-imagination of the urban ecologies.
Urban vegetation is usually a narrow mix of local, invasive and decorative species, which are seen respectively inside and outside the human domain, with the decorative plants often conceived of more as objects, rather than parts of the local ecosystem. Then, when human control or maintenance practices cease to be applied, best-adapted species thrive in an environment free of the limitations of their original habitats and often turn invasive, upending the balance of the local ecologies. On the other side of the control spectrum, technological advancements developed in the context of agriculture are starting to be explored as tools for allowing for the emergence of vegetation in previously hostile environments that could not provide for the existential needs of plants.
In the Japanese context, elements of ‘nature’ are understood to show their true essence only after being meticulously arranged or designed, often as an idealized version of their spontaneously occurring state. This principle stands at the core of the spatial role of vegetation in the broader aesthetic culture of Japan, particularly exemplified by the art of ikebana (flower arrangement), garden design, and contemporary architecture. While the practice of mimicking spontaneously occurring ecologies seems like a waste of resources, particularly in the urban context of Tokyo, the spatial tools developed to enhance those illusions can be deployed alongside rewilding strategies and new technologies to create a spatial language for the emerging xenological condition.
