Biocoenosis Nest: A City Woven by Collective Intelligences

Over the past 200,000 years, humans have become the dominant species on the planet. This has led to a level of population and consumption growth that is damaging biodiversity. In order to prevent catastrophic scenarios, by-products of the Anthropocene era, a non-human-centred approach is needed.

Biocoenosis Nest explores predicted climate change scenarios that could generate flooding in London’s East End. Instead of creating a boundary with the water, the project embraces water and explores the marshlands created. The marshland becomes a biodiversity node that provides nutrients required by non-humans to grow. To connect the marshland properties to optimal habitat locations throughout the city, slime mould is used to develop a non-human-centred distribution approach. The terrain is explored with machine learning to combine human and non-human entities in a more balanced coexistence in the Marshland City. The volumes extracted with code algorithms are analysed with different human and non-human programmes required to become multi-species nodes forming a synthetic fibrous nest.

The Marshland City embraces the flood to establish controlled coexistence in a post natural scenario. The synthetic fibrous nest allows humans on the inside and non-humans on the outside. This creates an association of different organisms in a non-invasive integrated community.