Against recycling nature - Carl Douglas considers buildings beyond site

‘Ecology’ sounds like something to do with science and solar panels, animal liberationists and atmospheric chemists. But Timothy Morton, author of Ecology without Nature (2007) and The Ecological Thought (2010) claims otherwise. Rather than being a topic or an area of study, he suggests ecology is simply exploring the consequences of a single thought: that everything is connected. Because there is no outside, ecology, in Morton’s eye, has little use for the concept of Nature. To imagine that our projects are sited in Nature is to fantasise about disconnection: to imagine that there is a world out there separate and unaffected by the world within the borders of the project.