Opening reception: Thurs., Feb. 14, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

This exhibition is about ecologies (or ecosystems) and design. It features student visualizations of the beauty of the logic of the bio-systems addressed in their design work. The exhibition includes work by students across CCA’s Architecture, Design, and Fine Arts divisions.

Premises of Our Approach:

1. Ecosystems do not have crisp linear boundaries, but overlap at multiple scales simultaneously. We, as designers, and as organisms, are always purchased at the intersection of multiple ecologies (both cultural and biological).

2. Biological ecosystems, and the organisms that constitute them, have bottom-up, in-built proclivities. These proclivities are pattern-producing, and these patterns are often beautiful. The beauty of such patterns is both formal (related to such things as form, color, aggregation, dispersion, etc.), and functional (related to the logic of organization, to nested hierarchies, stochastic processes, etc.)

Exhibition Theses:

1. These bio-patterning systems (ecologies) can be catered to by design, and doing so can enhance both non-human and human life; and they can be manipulated to create design (and art), and can be fed into a staged design processes in ways that widen the range of outcomes. Scientist-designer collaboration is key to both.

Organized and curated by Michael Bogan, Senior Adjunct Professor Interdisciplinary Studies

This exhibition was made possible in part by a CCA Faculty Exhibition Grant.