Plat 13: Alchemy views design as a process of interacting with the world around us using transformation, creation, and combination. The origin of the pieces encased in PLAT 13 range from rural America to industrial China, ditches in Australia, and Saudi Arabian deserts. Within the pages of PLAT 13 exist explorations of the extraordinary potential of natural resiliency, human agency through the radical occupation of their environment, the dehumanizing potentials of space and territory, and the capacity of design to subsume emotion. Some pieces offer solutions, while others bring attention to marginalized topics.
Architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, and design plan, strategize, wander, and will their way into their goals by altering, restoring, finding, and forming spaces. If Earth is the prima material, then buildings, landscapes, objects, and urban assemblages through the alchemical process of design have the inherent potential to transform every facet of life.
It is hard to define good design, but it is effortless to feel it.
It is seemingly magical.
It’s alchemy.