Monstering: a transdisciplinary method for an unstable world

The paper proposes monstering—always a verb—as a transdisciplinary method to engage with an unstable, ecologically stressed world. Drawing on the figure of Paradoxa and the limits of Linnaean taxonomy, the authors argue for research beyond conventional scientific rationalization to embrace speculative, performative encounters with material vitality. Monstering is framed as a means to dissolve normative boundaries, erase taxonomies, and choreograph new forms of inhabitation that include non-human agents. The purpose is to cultivate capacities for responsiveness, re-enchantment, and diplomacy across species, challenging architectural and design conventions in an age of ecocide.

The conceptual framing draws on: Braidotti’s zoë/zoephilia and nomadic ethics; Douglas on purity, order and taboo; Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae and its limits in handling Paradoxa; Haraway’s critique of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene and call to make kin; Margulis and Sagan’s symbiogenesis; Tsing et al. on living on a damaged planet with ghosts and monsters; and indigenous, reciprocal relations with more-than-human worlds (Wall Kimmerer). These sources situate monstering within critical posthumanism, ecological thought, and experimental design, foregrounding non-linear, multispecies assemblages and challenging anthropocentric typologies.

The Experimental Architecture Group operationalizes monstering through transdisciplinary, performative prototypes that entangle bodies, materials, media, and sites. Methods include design-led research, dramaturgy, workshop pedagogy, and site-specific installations: - The Temptations of the Nonlinear Ladder (Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Do Disturb! festival, 8–10 April 2016): Public performances explored transitions between media (land–water–air) using a 4 m diameter black mirror (4 cm water), a 1.2 m polished aluminum platform on a pulley (≈600 kg rigging capacity), controlled lighting, droplet videos, medaka fish as liquid lenses, and dark-ground protocell films. Improvised movements produced interference patterns and kaleidoscopic reflections to stage non-linear, emergent phenomena beyond classical causal explanation. - Making Monsters (University of the Underground, Amsterdam; January 2018): Masters students created ‘monster’ prototypes via Exquisite Corpse drawings, assemblages of studio objects into monstrous cities, and 1:1 performative apparatuses from discarded items. Exercises explicitly undermined normative body schemas and anthropocentric priorities, culminating in performances that negotiated ethics of difference and hybrid bodies. - Monsters in Utopia (Northern Stage, Newcastle; Great Exhibition of the North, July 2018): A theater transformed into a ‘living building’ using bicycle parts within elastic polyurethane tubes, a central black mirror pool, spatialized sound (six overhead and wall speakers) blending human/non-human voices and field recordings. The installation immersed visitors in a dark, artificial forest of shifting reflections and shadows, invoking symbiogenesis and multispecies entanglement. - Learning from Landscape: Forging Folklore, Tallinn Tales (Tallinn Technical University; August 2018): Field-based workshop re-narrated ‘living’ landscapes as active agents using Estonian folklore. Students foregrounded environmental assemblages (flora, fauna, materials, atmospheres) to displace domesticated views of urban/rural spaces. - From Victoria Tunnel to Quantum Tunnelling (Victoria Tunnel, Newcastle; Being Human Festival, 17 Nov 2018): A guided, perambulatory performance through a disused coal wagonway used mirrors, chemicals, incantation, and sound art, engaging tunnel materialities (darkness, wetness, Hadrian’s Wall underside, blast barriers) to stage a metabolizing environment ‘birthing’ new monsters. - Trace Hall (Cyborg Garden, Matadero, Madrid; 2019): A mirrored walkway (dark exterior, silvered interior) with LED spotlights, liquid soundscapes (natural/artificial flows), and a villanelle (by Rolf Hughes) revealed microbial traces via touch on mirrored surfaces. Envisioned as a mobile living-architecture platform integrating a public urinal, hand basin, microbial fuel cells, screens, lights, and charging sockets to transform liquid human waste into electricity, cleansed water, and biomolecules. Across projects, the group integrates performance, material experiment, and narrative to choreograph human–nonhuman relations and test design as ecological diplomacy.

- Monstering enables qualitatively new spatial encounters and forms of inhabitation by embracing uncertainty, non-linearity, and hybrid embodiment. - Performative prototypes effectively challenge normative protocols, taxonomies, and anthropocentric design assumptions, expanding the repertoire of architectural research. - Engagements with non-human agents (microbes, fish, materials, landscapes, infrastructures) foster re-empowerment, reconnection, and re-enchantment with ecologically stressed environments. - Defamiliarization and transdisciplinary collaboration (design, performance, sound, biology) create conditions for ethical reflection and multispecies diplomacy. - Living-architecture approaches (e.g., Trace Hall’s microbial metabolisms) demonstrate pathways to bring designed change to functionality, translating human waste streams into energy and resources while making microbiome relations perceptible.

By invoking Paradoxa and staging transgressive assemblages, monstering addresses the research aim of developing methods for design to operate within more-than-human, unstable conditions. The projects show how aesthetic-dramaturgical strategies coupled with material experiment can render non-human agencies legible and participatory, thereby reframing sites as metabolizing, co-constituted environments rather than passive backdrops. This contributes to posthumanist design by offering tools to unsettle habits and typologies, foreground ethics of difference, and cultivate capacities—such as responsiveness, care, and reciprocity—required for ecological diplomacy. The significance lies in demonstrating that architectural research can produce knowledge through choreographed encounters and performative prototypes, opening a theatre of becoming where alternative functionalities and social–ecological relations are tested.

Monstering is presented as a mutable, transdisciplinary toolset for designing with more-than-human worlds. It advances experimental architecture by: 1) dissolving taxonomic boundaries and normative protocols through performative, site-specific prototypes; 2) integrating materials, bodies, and media into cohesive dramaturgies that reveal multispecies entanglements; and 3) proposing living-architecture functionalities (e.g., microbial energy and water systems) that align ecological process with user experience. Future directions include scaling and operationalizing living-architecture infrastructures (such as the full Trace Hall platform), deepening microbiological lenses for design criteria, and extending workshop/performance formats to diverse landscapes and communities to co-create more liveable and lively multispecies worlds.

The study is exploratory and qualitative, relying on site-specific performances and installations without quantitative evaluation or controlled comparisons. Outcomes are context-dependent and ephemeral, which may limit generalizability. Monstering deliberately resists standard assessment metrics, raising ethical and methodological ambiguities that require ongoing negotiation. Practical deployment of living-architecture systems (e.g., microbial fuel cells integrated into public amenities) remains work-in-progress and untested at scale.