"The Orbit of Regeneration"

2026

George Katodrytis

Aamna Jasem, Hend Ali, Shaikha Sultan

The project begins with the domestic act of cleaning and its relationship to wellness. Cleaning is understood not as a simple movement from dirty to clean, but as a continuous cycle of scrubbing, wiping, polishing, and maintaining. Rather than focusing on the visible surface, the project highlights the invisible gestures and systems that sustain it. Through collages and material experiments using bubbles, paint, sponges, towels, loofahs, and water, cleaning was translated into spatial language. These studies explored motion, texture, porosity, pressure, and connection, eventually forming three main phases: Purify, Pressurize, and Produce. In Purify, the system is organic and porous. Bubbles, loofahs, and sponge-like structures create soft, absorbent geometries shaped by water, pressure, and friction. In Pressurize, the system becomes more controlled. Water is directed through tubes, forming the “machine heart,” where structure, energy, and movement begin to organize. In Produce, the system becomes fully defined. Flow and pressure generate growth through a clear grid, transforming the machine into a productive and living structure. Together, these phases form the Orbit of Regeneration, a living machine that merges domestic space, water systems, absorbing floors, growing walls, and greenery to create wellness and ecological order. The project is placed within a quarry, a deep excavated landscape with the potential for regeneration. Because water is central to the project, the quarry’s depth allows closer access to underground water channels. Rather than placing the machine onto the site, the machine begins to shape the site itself. The central heart settles first, sending signals that carve the ground and create an underground water system. From it, secondary elements expand outward: meshes become fossil-like formations, while fabrics become draped dunes. The landscape gradually shifts from rocky conditions to more ordered grid systems, showing how the machine produces dunes, fossils, excavations, water, steam, and temperature. Once the system becomes self-sustaining, the mechanical heart can move on, allowing the site to continue its cycle naturally. The project therefore imagines architecture as a living machine for ecological rebirth, where the underground reservoir and central device operate in a continuous loop of water, energy, and regeneration. Programmatically, the center is formed by three interconnected organs. The Biogenesis Lab generates new cycles of growth through soil, seeds, water, and living experiments. The Heart acts as the metabolic core, combining power generation, water processing, and environmental control. The Ecological Intelligence Lab functions as the analytical mind, monitoring and regulating climate, systems, and ecological order. Below, an underground aquifer reservoir stores and circulates water, sustaining the entire system. Around the machine, two territories expand outward: the Cultivation Grounds, where planting landscapes and food systems are organized, and the Systems Forum, where research, observation, learning, and public discussion take place. Overall, the project is not a static monument, but a regenerative institution: an artificial living machine designed to restore ecological order until architecture and landscape become one continuous system.