Core Option Studio: How to Build a Ruin — Seed Politics
This studio explores entanglements of ecological preservation in the face of climate collapse and genetic erosion. Centering on the seed vault as a critical typology, the studio reimagines preservation infrastructure not as passive storage but as active resistance.
Still from Jumana Manna’s film "Wild Relatives" (2018).
This studio explores entanglements of ecological preservation in the face of climate collapse and genetic erosion. Centering on the seed vault as a critical typology, students propose mediations between security and access, institutional control and community sovereignty, deep time and immediate crisis. Exploring vaults as both bunkers and commons, the studio reimagines preservation infrastructure not as passive storage but as active resistance, proposing spatial strategies that reconnect seeds to bodies, landscapes, and collective futures rooted in regenerative practice.
Ultimately, we examine the architectural, political, and ecological stakes of biodiversity conservation, asking: Who controls genetic resources, and whose futures are safeguarded? How can design enable the social infrastructures of seed sharing, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and agrobiodiversity? In a world where corporations patent life itself, what role can architecture play in creating infrastructures of resistance, care, and collective stewardship?