Axes Mundi

We invite early-career researchers, artists, designers, architects, scientists, writers and practitioners to join our network. We are open to collaborating with individuals and collectives who are developing a critical and creative practice that traverses disciplinary boundaries. Our current areas of interest include - but are not limited to – the following interconnected fields:

Ecology
Geology
Urbanism
Infrastructure
Geography
Geopolitics
Ethnography
Cartography
System Theory
Cybernetics
Sense-making
Enactivism
Cosmology
etc.

For more information, please refer to the document available here:

Metamorphic Zone begins from the co-production among practitioners across diverse disciplines, taking words as shared departure points and thresholds through which practices meet, translate, and transform. From writing to editorial, words here are not vessels of meaning but mediators of relation, inviting new forms of dialogue across fields and sensibilities. Through collaborative writing, we encounter the multiplicity of worlds that words seek to hold together.

There are two ways of rendering our choices for the inquiry into existence, a state of bifurcation: one is the real but meaningless matter named nature – or the material; the other is the meaningful but unreal symbol named culture – or the mind. However, these two are in a relationship of shaping and being shaped by each other. To overcome the oppositional yet inseparable relationship of this bifurcation, one might recognise that the world is composed of hybrids of both the natural and the cultural. The world acts in multiplicity. Words are one of these agents, with semantic capacities that contribute to mediating our relationship to the world.

From the Nature of singularity to the World of multiplicity, we must learn to inhabit the metamorphic zone. Metamorphism is a fundamental attribute of the world itself; it can be understood as any entity, agency, or phenomenon undergoing transformation, whether human or non-human, material, or immaterial. Within this condition, different actors exchange features, leading to new distributions of agency.

Metamorphic Zone thus exists as a living field of correspondences, an ongoing co-production where practitioners, ideas, and worlds continuously encounter and reshape one another. From metaphor to metamorphism, words are actors that navigate us within the world where existence and signification are synonyms, embedded as properties of all agents.

This project has taken form through the effort, enthusiasm, and generosity of each contributor. In this shared process, discussing, learning, and working together have been invaluable.

The intention behind Metamorphic Zone emerged from an intuition to assemble a shared glossary – one that could articulate how we inhabit, think, and act together in the Anthropocene. The name draws on the legacy of Bruno Latour, whose work reminds us that metamorphosis is an epistemic condition: a simultaneous transformation of knowledge, perception, and the world we inhabit.

Responding to the challenge of bringing practitioners from varied disciplines into conversation, the project seeks to cultivate a network in which ideas evolve through encounter, knowledge is generated through dialogue, and collaboration becomes a shared response to shifting conditions.

We are grateful for the insights and guidance of Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino, whose teaching at the Architectural Association significantly informed the development of the project. Thanks to our friends Shuhang Clarice Cao, Sheer Gritzerstein, and Hiroaki Yamane for their inspired ideas and support.

Our initial contributors, including Kunlin He, Kristiina Koskentola, Lucia Rebolino, and Dr. Catherine Russell, have been generous in their engagement. We are especially grateful to web designers Pianpian He and Max Harvey, and to web developer Mianwei Wang, whose thoughtful work enabled the realisation of the digital platform.

The axis mundi, or cosmic axis, refers to a perceived connection between the celestial, terrestrial, and subterranean realms. Theorised by Mircea Eliade in the mid-20th century, this concept represents a vertical structure or centralised point that facilitates the intersection of disparate domains, encompassing spiritual, mythological, and cosmological traditions. Functioning as a material manifestation of the sacred, the axis mundi is articulated through archetypal elements such as mountains and trees, alongside anthropogenic constructs including towers, ladders, staircases and maypoles.

Matteo Bettini

Michaela Büsse

Shuhang Cao

Benedetta Ferrari

Haoge Gan

Sheer Gritzerstein

Kunlin He

Kristiina Koskentola

Kan Li

Lucia Rebolino

Dr. Catherine Russell

Benedetta Ferrari