Carissa Auth
Symbiosis
My thesis is an investigation into the symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. This project begins not with a preconceived form, but with a method of seeing. It proposes a new way of looking at nature, not as something static or picturesque, but as something dynamic and able to be reinterpreted through a digital lens. It asks: What happens when we create a generative process that creates a new kind of nature that can be analyzed and digitized into parametric architecture?
As an architectural student, I see this relationship as more than a conceptual pairing; it is a framework for a new design methodology. Nature is an evolving system, shaped by environmental, biological, and cultural forces. Technology, particularly in its computational and parametric forms, offers tools to read, analyze, and project these systems into architectural form. By stripping natural imagery down to its essential geometries such as light and shadow, density and void, we can uncover latent patterns that become generative codes. These codes do not simply mimic nature; they transform it into architectural logic, allowing buildings to grow from data the way plants grow from genetic DNA.
In this process, projections become the mediator between perception and construction. Projection acts as the translator, flattening nature into digital form, embedding it into architectural typologies, and then re-expanding it into inhabited space. Surfaces shift between transparency, opacity, and permeability to create a dynamic dialogue between what is physically grown and what is digitally generated. This interplay allows for spaces that change with seasons, user interaction, or environmental input, blurring the boundary between the organic and the artificial.
Ultimately, my thesis positions nature not as a static artifact but as an interface, an evolving habitat where real and digital ecologies merge. It specifically merges botanical knowledge with digital precision. And through projection, it offers a way to not only see nature differently—but to experience it differently.
