Multispecies Neighbourhoods

Agriculture, architecture, and more-than-human settlement. 

The present biodiversity crisis is often framed as a struggle to preserve untouched nature. Yet researchers have recently shown that as much as three quarters of the earth’s terrestrial surfaces have been occupied and shaped by humans for more than 12000 years. Humans are not ‘separate to’ but ‘part of’ nature. We have, until very recently, lived in ways that were neither urban, nor rural, natural nor cultural, but in a diverse set of ecosystems that included human and non-humans in symbiosis. 

In this installation the architect and researcher Matthew Dalziel explores the close histories of agriculture and architecture and the possible near futures where our neighbourhoods and our human ecosystems at large, are much more radically integrated with nature and other species than we currently envision them. The installation explores the neighbourhood as this kind of symbiosis.

A seed structure made of local straw and clay represents a kind of proto-architecture. Inside a forest of edible and beneficial species is growing. A thriving man-made multispecies neighbourhood that suggests a very different and very old way of thinking about how we live and who we live with. 

About 

​​Multispecies Neighbourhoods is designed by Atelier Dalziel in collaboration with Efferus and built by Matthew Dalziel and Ask Holmen

The project is made possible with the generous support of Efferus.no

Second image by Are Carlsen all other images by Matthew Dalziel