The project is based on two overarching concepts that are extracted from the 18th International Architecture Exhibition: The Laboratory of the Future, the “DE” and “RE” concepts. The “DE” concepts signify efforts to undo, reverse and dismantle, while the “RE” concepts are an effort to recover something that is past or has been lost, to maintain the currency and relevance of something from an older time.

Fuelled by the extraction and commodification of natural resources, the hegemonic conceptualisation of human beings as separate from nature is reflected throughout the development paradigm and western architectural practice. It is within this discursive landscape that environmentally destructive cycles continue to evolve across Tasmania and the world on an industrial scale, in which decimated lands are symbols of the deforestation and extractivism that are promoted as the exclusive pathway towards modernity and progress.

The intervention confronts contemporary architectural practices and the wider development industry perspective in relation to the environment and native plants, as it seeks to imagine landscape as the very place to conceive a project, not just a means to completion.

Focused on collaborative knowledge production, ecological and interdisciplinary research, and pre-colonial understandings of agricultural practices, this program seeks to deconstruct conventional educational structures by providing common spaces for inclusive and participatory learning that will explore more sustainable behaviours towards land use and critical responses to a post-climate world.