Plat 13: Alchemy embraces design as a transformative dialogue intertwining creation, transformation, and combination. The works featured in this issue traverse geographies as diverse as rural America, industrial China, the ditches of Australia, and the deserts of Saudi Arabia—each exploring design’s potential to reshape and reimagine. Within its pages, contributors examine themes such as natural resilience, the radical ways human beings inhabit their environments, the dehumanizing possibilities of spatial and territorial constructs, and design’s capacity to convey and subsume emotion. Some of the contributions offer solutions; others cast light on overlooked or marginalized issues.
Through architecture, landscape, urbanism, and design, we chart, strategize, and shape our environment by altering, restoring, and reimagining spaces. If earth serves as the prima materia, then the alchemical process of design transforms buildings, landscapes, objects, and urban assemblages into forms that touch every aspect of life.
Good design defies simple definition—it’s something we feel, something we know innately. It’s seemingly magical. It’s alchemy.