Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture

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Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture

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  • Project Name: Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden
  • Student Name: Conrad Daniel Areta
  • Softwares/Plugins: Adobe Photoshop , Grasshopper , Rhinoceros 3D , Blender , Adobe After Effects , Light Pixeloop
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Excerpt: ‘Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden’ is an architecture thesis on fictional architecture by Conrad Daniel Areta from the School of Architecture and Cities – University of Westminster that proposes a dichotomous recreational area functioning as a regenerative prosthesis within the surrounding environment. The project showcases the cyborg as a design tool that responds to sustainable practices, the notion of regeneration, and the current realities of our climate.

Introduction: Ukiyo.Land is a project that sets itself in a post-human narrative, that questions reality through the cyborg’s body, similar to those raised in Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and Leo Marx’s “The Machine in the Garden.” The project proposes a dichotomous recreational area that functions as a regenerative prosthesis within the surrounding environment, using the cyborg as a design tool that responds to the sustainable practices, the notion of regeneration, and the current realities of our climate.

Ukiyo.Land is designed to use responsive machine elements that use ecology and human physiology to clean the localised air, water and river waste. It poses the question: how would cyborgs recreate the Garden of Eden?

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Site Context

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Mapping London and local air quality to determine the site’s design response
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Mapping Localised Water Quality to understand how to better treat the site’s existing conditions

‘Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden’ envisions a self-governing climate-controlled prosthetic leisure district situated on the old slipway on the Isle of Dogs’ west bank (formerly the entrance lock to the Millwall Docks). The main programme of the project is as follows: A public toilet and changing rooms, a bathhouse, gardens and playgrounds, a teahouse and skypark and a temporary riverboat race pavilion are the first five amenities. These all serve as waste, water, and air filters as well.

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Nerve Pathway Overlay: Understanding the site as a body

The project proposes regeneration through a requestioning of existing societal boundaries, via the relationship between human, building, and ecology, through the agency of A.L.I.C.E., as both an Odradek and a Cyborg. It speculates on how our preexisting ontologies have evolved through agency subversions, responsive and regenerative design, and the concepts of pleasure and function.

Design Process

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Looking at the site as a nervous system for A.L.I.C.E
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Intervention site plan studying the initial agency of A.L.I.C.E. on site

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Playground Construction Sequence
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Taste Bud Garden Intervention System Section: Initial Breathing Playground Concept

The design process started with a research film that introduced and initiated an analysis of the site and its surrounding context, all while examining the agency of the cyborg protagonist, “A.L.I.C.E.” Subsequently, the design was explored by superimposing taste and microorganisms, relating it to the site like a mouth of a river.

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Design prompts that make up the cyborg main protagonist, A.L.I.C.E
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Section of A.L.I.C.E. as an environmental machine design tool
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Diagram indicating the cyborgean machine interfaces, relating the project back to the “Cyborg Manifesto” and the “Machine in the Garden”

A cyborgean design flow that takes into account the influence of the human hand against the formalisations of the machine was introduced by developing it from the initial site research to design formation. This involved blending both hand-drawn and digital elements.

Final Outcome

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land- Masterplanning a Cyborg’s Garden

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Exploded Isometric of Kumo.Land Teahouse

The final outcome of the project is a scheme that, like the cyborgs in Haraway’s manifesto, betrays our conceptions of normative architecture by merging the boundaries separating humans and machines to create a highly speculative, highly intimate, and adaptive architecture for a world in which the cyborg body has taken over.

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Detail of the Playgrounds breathe receptor machinery
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Exploded isometric and floating screw pile detail
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Render of A.L.I.C.E.’s surveillance during the Cyborgean Tea Fog Ceremony

The scheme considers the concept of pleasure gardens, the Japanese Ukiyo Pleasure districts, and the idea of the transitory world, combining them with the cyborg to form the Ukiyo.Land. It challenges our perceptions of sustainability, our pleasures and allows us to be lost within a world not unlike Alice discovering Wonderland.

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Render of the Aka.House Infrared Sauna and the breathe data interface
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Year 3000: A speculation of the far future, where A.L.I.C.E. and Ukiyo.Land evolve into a climactic walking city that cleans the London climate

Conclusion: Ukiyo.Land is a visionary project that transcends traditional architectural boundaries, merging human and machine to create a speculative, intimate, and adaptive environment. It offers a glimpse into a future where human and machine coexist in harmony, creating spaces that are as dynamic and transient as the lives they house.

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]

Site Context

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture

Design Process

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture

Final Outcome

Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture
Ukiyo.Land & the Pleasures of a Cyborg’s Garden | Masters Design Thesis on Fictional Architecture

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