Linda Kopitz | Artificial Amsterdam: Architectural Writing and the Urban (Re)imagination of Nature
Linda Kopitz | Artificial Amsterdam: Architectural Writing and the Urban (Re)imagination of Nature | University of Amsterdam, Media Studies | Supervisors: Markus Stauff, Maryn Wilkinson | 1 September 2022 – 31 August 2025 | l.kopitz[at]uva.nl
In our current moment of ecological crisis, creating urban environments that are more green, more sustainable, more livable has become an urgent challenge. Encompassing strategies as diverse as the private greening of rooftops via technological ‘smart’ solutions to the municipally mandated use of renewable construction materials, sustainability is a practical concern, representational practice and discursive process. This PhD project proposes that the cross-mediality of ‘architectural writing’ – architecture as writing – plays a crucial role in the sustainable (re)imagination of urban life through the production of nature within the city. Taking a cross-media approach to case studies of ‘sustainable’ building projects in/around Amsterdam, this project aims to trace how nature – and crucially the multi-sensorial and caring values connected to nature – are both figuratively and literally written into the fabric of the city. From the initial imagination of buildings via architectural models, to their virtual rendering and physical production on construction sites as well as their continuous communicative positioning, architectural writing highlights the social, political and cultural connotations of place-making in a negotiation of material and immaterial practices. With specific attention to the sensory qualities of both nature and architecture, this project seeks to offer a new starting point for thinking about an ethics of care for ourselves and the environment. This critical approach to existing and emerging ‘sustainable’ architectural projects will offer key insights into the interdependency between spaces, places and caring communities and contribute to broader debates about future-proofing and (re)imagining life in rapidly changing urban environments.
