The Factory for Hyper-Ecologies was an experimental design studio that invited students to design a multi-scalar architectural proposal in the Great Barrier Reef, responding to contemporary environmental challenges. Students designed a building or a series of buildings that investigated present and future programmatic synergies for interaction, consumption, study, production, management and/or growth of ecologies.
One project to emerge from this studio was Reh-zophora, a clinic for humans and non-humans that combines a healing transformation of coastline and estuary landscapes and a medical research institute. It is designed to purify the quality of water (specifically algal blooms) around some of the most polluted waterways along the Great Barrier Reef.
Reh-zophora focuses on human and environmental health by extracting excess algae for medicinal research and other practical purposes. Its strategic location in landscapes affected by excessive concentration of algae is taken as an opportunity to produce food and medicine while balancing the detrimental effects of eutrophication on the Great Barrier Reef. The multi-scalar effect of Reh-zophora turns the project into a local, national and international hub. It opens an urgent conversation in relation to conservation and production in which humans and non-humans coexist in a symbiotic manner: the landscape healing people and people healing the landscape.
This Project won the NSW Architectural Technologies Award at the 2018 NSW Student Architecture Awards Exhibition.
