Rural Alchemy
Productive Transformations of Agrarian Landscapes
Rural Alchemy transforms the landscape into holistic artificial natures, from hyper-productivity to third natures. It achieves this by inserting techno-social productive methods within the existing artificial landscape and proposing an amalgamation of synergistic programs for humans and non-humans.
Rural Alchemy aims to challenge depopulation, an issue affecting the Spanish countryside, by retaining and attracting talent through providing jobs of diverse educational levels. Proposing buildings that act as productive artifacts in which their shape is informed by performative aspects, generating bioclimatic devices, which enhance the production of the goods, creating a new economic, productive, social and technological context, in the shape of a pictorial fantasy. The final objective is to defy the notion of rural picturesque by inserting pop and performative architecture in this 98% of the remaining world.
Rural Alchemy is an intervention project in the town of Docenario in Extremadura, Spain. The colonization town was built in 1961 and counted with 36 houses and a church. Rural Alchemy transforms the landscape into holistic artificial natures, from hyper-productivity to third natures. The project aims to challenge depopulation, an issue affecting the Spanish countryside, by retaining and attracting talent through providing jobs of diverse educational levels, while generating a new local economic model. It achieves this by inserting techno-social productive methods within the existing artificial landscape and proposing an amalgamation of synergistic programs for humans and non-humans. The architecture acts as productive artifacts in which its shape is informed by performative aspects, generating bioclimatic devices, which enhance the production of the goods. There are three types of artifacts: the landscape reference (landscape activator), the infrastructure amidst (infrastructure activator) and the urban plug-in (urban activator). The landscape references tend to be bulkier and are isolated in the landscape. The urban plug-ins tend to be the smallest, as they reuse and reactivate the abandoned structures within the town. Finally, the infrastructural amidsts oversee supporting the landscape references and urban plug-ins, as they are the link between them. The location of these irregular diamond shaped artifacts is not arbitrary, as they catalyze the production surrounding them. The buildings are implemented physically and significantly along the entire landscape and urban settlement, generating a new discourse with the existing modernist architecture. This new discourse produces heteroglossia; richness based on the coexistence and conflict, with the objective of creating a new economic, productive, social and technological context, in the shape of a pictorial fantasy. The final objective is to defy the notion of rural picturesque by inserting pop and performative architecture in this 98% of the remaining world.
