speculating souths

What does a mud substrate have in common with a mycelium substrate? They are both ecosystems - void of the sterility of contemporary building materials.

They both evoke an architecture of architecture - a web of architectures both micro and macro, nested and nesting.




WHO ARE WE? 


Rural Futurisms is collective of writers, designers, cultural practitioners, historians, and organisers who are interested in decolonising the archive through design and Southernly perspectives on climate change and climate justice. The collective is currently pursuing a community based project as part of South Designs which is an enquiry on materials of making in Makgobistad, South Africa, and their dialogue with the cosmology of its dwellers. It explores how the people of Makgobistad design planetary futures through storytelling, work songs, oral histories, and an engagement with new and old design-making technologies. The project attempts to not only archive the process of the cultivation and creative compositions generated by clay but cross-examine it with radical living materials such as mycelium-reinforced clay.









Rural Futurisms / 2024