Conversation as Symbiosis
February 2026
With the theory of endosymbiosis, Lynn Margulis displaced one of the central myths of evolution: that novelty emerges primarily through competition.In Symbiotic Planet, she describes how bacteria:
“invaded and came to dwell inside each other… having neither immune systems nor rigid external barriers… they merged..., they exchanged genes... and became new kinds of complex cells.”Evolutionary innovation did not arise from domination.
It arose from contact.Two structural conditions made it possible:
– The capacity to merge
– The absence of rigid external boundariesWithout permeability, no new life forms could emerge.Architecture today operates through rigid epistemological barriers.
Disciplines are isolated. Variables are fragmented. Sustainability is treated as a technical layer rather than a transformation of thought.The crisis is not only climatic. It is epistemological.If biological novelty emerges through symbiosis, could architectural novelty emerge through conversation?Not conversation as debate.
Not conversation as hierarchy.
But conversation as a symbiotic structure of thought.A space where ecological, social, technological and biological systems overlap and interfere.Where ideas do not compete for dominance, but transform one another.This requires decentration.Can we enter into conversation not only with other humans, but with animals, plants, ecosystems, and intelligent machines?Can architectural thinking become permeable enough to host more-than-human agencies?The Symbiocene Architecture Project proposes that architecture must evolve through this shift.Not by optimizing existing frameworks, but by dissolving the rigid borders that prevent relational thinking.Conversation becomes method.
Symbiosis becomes structure.Architecture becomes a participant in the living systems it inhabits.
If the Anthropocene was organized around separation,
the Symbiocene calls for architectures of interdependence.Not buildings as objects.
But architectures as evolving ecologies of thought, matter, and relation.
This note updates the evolving hypothesis of Symbiocene Architecture.