The menagerie of human activities and agendas within the Great Barrier Reef (from coal conglomerates to university research stations and tourism meccas) positions the environment as completely subservient to the exchanges between various macro-economies, both monetary or resource-based, temporary or more permanent.
BIO X is an architectural proposal for a centralised market for these exchanges. Sited in Mackay, it facilitates trading between on- and off-shore ecologies of different existing biological substances that have highly specific rehabilitative qualities. This new architectural interface seeks to prioritise the agency of flora and fauna, and position humans not as consumers of the environment, but rather as facilitators and brokers for a new alternative model of conservation. Here, trade as a means of conservation is used to encourage owners and stakeholders to consider not only their own values in natural-resource decisions, but also the values of others who are willing to participate in the trade. In BIO X, substances are not traded for immediate profit, yet the act of trading for a rehabilitated territory will indirectly produce long term economic value for the various human stakeholders of the reef.
BIO X was developed as part of the Factory for Hyper-Ecologies, an experimental design studio. Students were invited to design a multi-scalar architectural proposal in the Great Barrier Reef that responded to contemporary environmental challenges and that investigated present and future programmatic synergies for interaction, consumption, study, production, management and/or growth of ecologies.
