State of Nature Nature is not what it was, if it ever was. Traditionally, the antithesis between nature and artifice has been a central structuring myth of culture. Contemporary technologies of genetic manipulation have forced a conceptual paradigm shift, conclusively collapsing this age-old distinction. Scientific ambition has unraveled the code for life and is beginning to design nature from within. From cloning and chimeras to organic machines, organic material has become both the tool and the product of design. These new entities and techniques elude traditional classification, creating an ontologically nuanced second nature. The more our technological control of nature increases, the more this control is 'naturalised', disguised, and embodied within the manipulated 'natural' media. Architecture has long been conceived as an imitation of nature, the idea of nature supplying metaphors and analogues for construction, organization, and ornamentation. Historically, nature has been a primary model for the genesis of form. Now the model is being re-modeled, but according to what model? The conventional distinction between nature and artifice is meaningless from a bio-industrial perspective. How does this collapse affect architecture, or has architecture always already suppressed this 'strange nature'? The conventional notion of architecture relating to the body is similarly disrupted by the new cybernetic matrix that sustains technologies such as genetic recombination and cloning. The sense of the body as a unique entity distinct from its environment is shattered by the trading of genetic material across species and the capacity to infinitely replicate identity. How does this biological model inform architectural body-building, as well as the traditional aesthetic categories by which we evaluate form?			Program Current global and local economies are capitalizing on the industrialisation and commodification of genetic information. Recognizing this new economic reality, the Bay Area markets itself to investment capital as Biotech Bay, 'the birthplace of biotechnology'. The studio program is a biotechnology research park, a project that will involve the development of a master plan and landscape strategy and the subsequent elaboration of one building within that plan. The site is on DNA Way at Oyster Point, a peninsula near South San Francisco that currently hosts a number of biotech campuses, including Genentech. In addition to developing a master plan for the new research park, students will be encouraged to use their projects to influence and/or structure the generic corporate sprawl that characterizes the current development. Since the program is a pretext to consider fundamental issues regarding the genesis and appraisal of architectural form, each student will be required to produce and regularly revise a written manifesto summarizing his or her position. The design work will be supplemented by a reader with texts on biotechnology, aesthetics, and architecture's historical relationship with nature.