CONFLUENCES

Confluences confronts the tensions produced by polarized worldviews by questioning dominant structures of human knowledge and opening space for other ways of seeing, relating, and coexisting. Working within design paradigms shaped by oppositions such as industry and nature, control and variability, the work does not seek resolution but operates from within these tensions as a site of inquiry. It begins from a pre-existing condition: a branch found on Pratt campus, approached as a structure carrying its own logic. The design process shifts from projection to relation, unfolding through continuous negotiation with the material’s capacities. Steel enters as a second materiality, introducing a contrasting logic of precision without overriding the branch’s irregularity. The structure emerges through this coexistence, where each decision responds to the branch’s anatomy. What results is not a fixed solution, but a system grounded in relation, where balance is continuously negotiated and use unfolds through interaction. Confluences proposes a biocentric approach in which design participates in a broader network of forces, positioning nature as an active presence and design as a form of world-making.