Broken Nature

From regenerating coral reefs to contemplating feeding an overpopulated planet, the works in Broken Nature show how design and architecture might jumpstart constructive change. This exhibition—a collaboration with the Triennale di Milano—highlights the concept of restorative design, and offers strategies to help humans repair their relationship to the environments that they share with other species and each other.

The projects selected for this installation explore a range of themes. Kelly Jazvac’s Plastiglomerates—dense geological formations of sand and plastic waste, fossils from the future—reveal the long-term effects that human behaviors will have on the Earth’s layers. Intake Facility for an Anonymous Client, by Mustafa Faruki of theLab-lab for architecture, imagines a facility for processing angels migrating to Earth; it considers borders, transitions, and entry procedures while investigating architecture's potential to create a more empathetic world. In Can City, design duo Studio Swine (Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers) have devised a mobile foundry that melts discarded aluminum cans salvaged from the streets of São Paulo, helping the city’s waste pickers jump start an artisanal enterprise. Other projects—like Julia Lohmann’s Oki Naganode—explore a range of new materials and processes intended to lead citizens to a more responsible attitude toward the world they occupy and shape.