Today, we live in environments that humans have accepted as "natural" although they are not natural at all. Some of these landscapes are even composed completely of non-natural elements such as urban agglomerations, and some might appear less artificial, as they use elements found in natural environments, such as gardens or even productive lands. However, these landscapes are completely manmade, and serve only humans, like landscapes that have been engineered for touristic use, making them fake natural environments.
To become aware of the unnatural natural environments, the project Rural Alchemy proposes to colonize visually the landscape, but also activating it for humans and non-humans, through productive artifacts in the shape of landscape references, infrastructural amidst and urban plug-ins. Ultimately, these artificial natures create an artificial ecological system, that incorporates the rules of manmade artifacts, with the evolving ones of the natural realm.
Rural Alchemy transforms the landscape into holistic artificial natures, from hyper-productivity to third natures. The project aims to challenge depopulation, an issue affecting the Spanish countryside, by retaining and attracting talent through providing jobs of diverse educational levels, while generating a new local economic model. It archives this by inserting techno-social productive methods within the existing artificial landscape and proposing an amalgamation of synergistic programs for humans and non-humans.
The architecture acts as productive artifacts in which its shape is informed by performative aspects, generates bioclimatic devices, which enhance the production of the goods. Ultimately, developing regional cooperatives. For the sake of the PFG2019 one of these new ecologies is developed in Docenario, Extremadura.
The final objective is to defy the notion of rural picturesque by inserting pop and performative architecture in this 98% of the remaining world.
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