Reclaiming Chachalu: Monumentality in Pursuit of Ecomechanization

Advanced Architectural Design Studio I

Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture

Professors Na Wei and Eric Oskey

2023

Climate disasters cannot be adequately addressed without first addressing misconceptions about the relationship between humans and the environment. This project responds to the role of political decisions in rendering contemporary ecological and anthropogenic systems incapable of responding to the increasing threat of wildfires. At the heart of this proposal is a renegotiation of land use in favor of returning national forests to the stewardship of indigenous communities. The design response forces a reconsideration of settler narratives about environmental control and manipulation, arriving at a new understanding of ‘natural’ systems as fully impacted by human action, and thus fully capable of being designed in favor of a life lived with fire, rather than in fear of it. Appropriating methods of boundary making and monumentality, Reclaiming Chachalu utilizes the mechanization of ecological processes expressed in geological forms to collapse land use and articulate a new, more sustainable future.