Open call: The Feral Palace

Trajna association, in cooperation with the Centre for Creativity, at the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, invites architects, landscape architects and designers to The Feral Palace open call. 

Multispecies Design Challenge introduces principles of zöonomic methodology, multispecies urbanism, and more-than-human commoning as necessary foundations for designers’ engagement with untamed sites in contemporary cities. The programme brings together pioneering knowledge from these emerging fields and designers’ ability to reflect conceptually on the unthinkable. No previous expertise with the topic is required. 

The object of our collective investigation is Krater (English: crater), an abandoned construction site that was gradually taken over by feral ecosystems. Though previously excluded from development plans and presently successfully coordinated by non-governmental organizations, Krater is not resilient—in fact, just the opposite is coming true: its multispecies community is to be replaced with a large complex, the Palace of Justice, conjoining three courts of justice and the adjacent park.

In order to find resilient ways of cohabitating future cities, Gaja Mežnarić Osole and Danica Sretenović curated the programme to invent novel perspectives of seeing and valorising untamed urban territories, ones which would inspire a shift in spatial planning towards design for multispecies justice. We thereby invite creatives to investigate the diverse layers of the »Feral Palace«, which includes designing for regenerative economic models, all-inclusive ecosystems, multispecies urbanism and approaches to their representation.

Translocal mentors
Participants will create their projects under online mentorship of the driving force behind the zoöp movement, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Het Nieuwe Instituut), author of the term multispecies urbanism, Debra Solomon (Urbaniahoeve Foundation), social-ecological transformations researcher, Rok Kranjc (Institute for Ecology), co-founder of Krater creative laboratory, Gaja Mežnarić Osole (Trajna) and architect Danica Sretenović. 

Open call for applications
Participants are encouraged to apply in interdisciplinary groups composed of up to 5 members. It is recommended that groups include the expertise of lawyers, ecologists, biologists, environmental social scientists, and similar profiles in their team. 5 to 7 groups will be selected to participate in the mentorship programme based on their application and its relevance to the programme topic. 

Selected projects will be presented in the co-production programme with the Center of Creativity and exhibited under the satellite programme of Ljubljana’s Biennial of Design BIO27 Super Vernaculars, Design for a Regenerative Future.

Applications deadline: April 22, 2022. 

Read more about the open call.
Apply now.

Feral Palace Talks
Design challenge will be supported with a series of online talks. The programme is intended for both participants of the design challenge as well as for practitioners who are interested in design for regenerative multispecies co-existence.  

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer: The Practice of Zoönomy
March 22, 2022, 5pm CET
Video of the talk.

Debra Solomon: Multispecies Urbanism and Public Space
April 6, 2022, 5pm CET    
Register here.

Rok Kranjc: Governing More-than-human Transformation    
April 19, 2022 5pm CET    
Register here.

This project is a part of a partnership network Platform Centre for Creativity co-financed by the European Union from European Regional Development Fund and by the Republic of Slovenia.

Press inquiries: info [​at​] trajna.com