Nichola Czyz (UCL) - 2025-26 Students
zcftf56@ucl.ac.uk

Designing with Ecological Time

As climate change destabilises ecological calendars, the synchrony between trees, insects and birds becomes increasingly disrupted. Seasonal change unfolds unevenly across species, landscapes and microclimates, making ecological time increasingly difficult to perceive. This research asks how architecture might cultivate attentiveness to these shifting temporal realities.

Through long-term observation, experimental drawing, fiction and walking, the project develops a design framework of routes, rituals, climatic devices and seasonal markers that enables thinking with, walking with, and designing with the temporal rhythms of a woodland. Rather than treating trees as passive objects of observation, the project develops architectural practice through dialogue with trees, insects, birds, weather and microclimates as ecological co-designers.

Drawing on Land Art, phenology, Japanese cultural practices of seasonal attention, and theories of ecological time, the project proposes architecture as a practice of perceiving, designing with and participating in ecological time.

Principal Supervisor: Prof. Penelope Haralambidou