PARLIAMENT FOR LIVING THINGS
by Edmund Alcock
My design project is a political centre; a Parliament - for our new town to nurture the landscape and allow it to prosper. At the heart of the programme lies an amphitheatre - a chamber of debate, and an ‘elder statesman’ tree wired via its roots into an AI, that acts as a focal point for debate and a conduit for communication with the landscape - including ancient forests and wilding ‘corridors’ and relaying information to the town people. Thus creating a value system of circularity: The people look after the tree and the landscape and in return, they live in a strong ecological landscape. The project was inspired by the Italian scientist and philosopher, Stefano Mancuso who researches into how plants can communicate with one another, and how, one day, we may be able to communicate with plants themselves. The programme is a public space that merges with nature, a kind of civic garden; a spiritual place. I was inspired by the work of landscape architects Kim Wilkie and also Laurence Halprin - in particularly the latter’s theoretical talk, The Ecology of Nature - ideas of not replicating nature perfectly but learning from how nature grows.
