Building Across Natures: The Material and Mediated Life of Lina Ghotmeh’s Stone Garden

Building Across Natures argues that, in a contemporary world increasingly shaped by networks of communication, representation, and media, considering architecture at an ecological or planetary scale should not be limited to the relationship between natural and human-made physical environments. Alongside the question of “for whom do we build?”, the study introduces the question of “where do we live and build today?” to contribute a different perspective to the discussion. In this context, the concepts of first, second, and third nature are examined to question architecture’s position among increasingly intertwined material, cultural, and mediated environments. The resulting conceptual framework is explored through Lina Ghotmeh’s Archaeology of the Future as a design approach, and through Stone Garden as a concrete example of its transformation into architectural production. This study explores how architecture can carry relationships among nature, place, culture, and people beyond a building’s physical location when its physical and representational dimensions are conceived and produced as an integrated whole, suggesting how local meanings may be rearticulated through wider media circulation.