Page 7 - JCAU-5-2

Journal of Chinese

Architecture and Urbanism

REVIEW ARTICLE
Gestures for interdependence: Expanding

regenerative design through spatial
dramaturgies for the unseen, the unheard, and

the unfelt

Breg Horemans*
Department of Architecture, KU Leuven Campus Sint-Lucas, Ghent, Flanders, Belgium
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Regenerative Architecture)

Abstract

The reality of the Anthropocene performs on us through various esthetic spatial
experiences. To undo the consequences of modernity, spatial designers are moving
toward a regenerative (restorative and non-extractivist) way of thinking, doing, and
being. Situated in the growing field of spatial dramaturgy, this article focuses on how
esthetic experience can contribute to attitudes toward regenerative spatial design
through collaborations with more-than-human entities. If spatial design moves
towards a pluriversality based on relationships of interdependence, how can spatial
design generate esthetic experiences of regeneration accordingly? How do we design
*Corresponding author: experiences of interdependence? In this paper, we discuss the experimental practice of
Breg Horemans the TAAT arts collective, a transdisciplinary practice aimed at developing performative
(breg@taat-projects.com) installations. The fieldwork (situated in Lithuania and the Netherlands) covers
Citation: Horemans, B. (2023). processes in which rivers — as more-than-human entities — are taking up a leading
Gestures for interdependence: role as cocreators. In every location, the spatial dramaturgical development is based
Expanding regenerative design on methods of embodied experiences, scoring, cocreation, and written reflections.
through spatial dramaturgies for the
unseen, the unheard, and the unfelt. These methods are implemented to prototype “gestures of interdependence”. We will
Journal of Chinese Architecture and treat these as design gestures (attitudes and approaches) aimed at foregrounding
Urbanism, 5(2):0358. unseen places (sites of extraction and exploitation) and unheard bodies (more-
https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0358
than-human entities that are silenced) in the field of regenerative spatial design. By
Received: March 22, 2023 revealing the agency of the unseen and the unheard in spatial design processes, we
Accepted: June 13, 2023 will broaden our understanding of “designing the unfelt”. In conclusion, a design score
will summarize our findings. This score can be implemented in spatial design practices
Published Online: July 4, 2023
(ranging from scenography, installation art, architecture, and social practice) focused
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). on generating embodied esthetic experiences of regeneration.
This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-
Non-Commercial 4.0 International Keywords: Anthropocene; Situated knowledge; More-than-human entities; Relationality;
(CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all Presencing; Performance
non-commercial use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited.
Publisher’s Note: AccScience
Publishing remains neutral with
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Volume 5 Issue 2 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0358