Deploying Transitions
Diogo Ferreira
Konstantinos Venis
Giada Zuan
HRO was founded in 2020 to seek evidence for the development of alternative methodological devices that inquire into desirable futures for the planet. HRO’s aim initially materialized in the field of design research as a digital archive of collective knowledge, a landscape of heterogeneous open-ended questions. It subsequently began to move around teaching, performances and installations, with the common aim of extending the speculative power of architecture to other domains and through less conventional means that can unleash its critical agency. The common approach is conceived as a process to raise awareness through the acts of mapping, linking and questioning: the main processes combine architectural drawing, 3D modeling, cartographic representation, scripted simulations, GIS mapping, interviews. The will to address issues that do not necessarily fall within the canonical boundaries of architectural practice and knowledge requires contributions from different areas of experience and expertise. An integral part of the process is the collaborative effort from various fields, building networks on environmental impact projects, while navigating between planning, climatology, activism, architecture and art. The generation of connections is a key driver through which to expand HRO’s position, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to environment and spatial biodiversity, for a deeper understanding of how to relate to the challenges of the contemporary condition.
There exists an invisible complexity in the places we inhabit, a system animated by forces of energy and matter that flow and propagate in a continuous process of exchange and transformation: a planetary metabolism, which geography extends in the depths of the sea, in the air, in space, underground, on land, and even within our bodies. Within this extended territory, where a significant re-composition of natural and human-made habitats is constantly in progress, there is an urge to reconsider the binary preconceptions about the human-made and natural ecosystems that dominate spatial planning for energy infrastructure.
The urban scale has now exploded, reaching a planetary condition of urbanization with no historical precedent of how to serve a planet of 8 billion human beings.
Considering the climatic-ecological, socio-political and the crisis of the self as today's urgency, Hyperscapes Research Office (HRO) focuses on the synergies between different thematic clusters: Violence, Ecologies & Entanglements, Planetary Imageries, Hyperscapes. The effort to answer the question “what activates contemporary challenges?” unfolds several discoveries interconnected with the role of architecture in it, which has begun to conceive HRO as an opportunity to pursue awareness and to unlock the critical power of architecture.