Monsters and Mutants: Explorations in the Architecture-Nature Continuum

Spotlights Archi-Tectonics' novel architectural taxonomies that were implemented in the firm's award-winning master plan from the 2023 Asian Games.

Monsters and Mutants presents a provocation for a new approach to reverse the consequences of the Anthropocene, by learning from plant intelligence. New York-based design firm Archi-Tectonics' recent research on climate change opened up a field unknown to architecture so far. By emulating organic intelligence, Winka Dubbeldam and her team created a series of new architectural taxonomies: Hybrids and Earth Buildings, part nature, part architecture. Appropriating organic intelligence, these structures are at once resilient, resource-efficient, and beneficial for humans and non-humans, capable of healing our ecosystem.

Monsters and Mutants showcases how these revolutionary concepts were implemented for the first time in the masterplan for the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, that Archi-Tectonics designed in collaboration with !melk Landscape Architecture & Urban Design and Thornton Tomasetti structural & environmental engineers. Lavishly illustrated and with contributions from esteemed architects and theorists such as Carlo Ratti, Thom Mayne, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, and Justin Korhammer, the book explores the future of urban and architectural design in making cities more resilient and sustainable. It provides a critical look at how multi-disciplinary collaboration and innovative thinking can address some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time, turning potential ecological crises into opportunities for regeneration and transformation.