“Super species are the phenomenally successful invasive life-forms that are dominating ecosystems. These animals, plants and microbes have spread far from their native habitats, most often as a result of human activities. The key to super species' success is their ability to adapt quickly. Super species may be unusually aggressive, difficult to kill, unfazed by the presence and activity of humans, capable of astonishingly rapid rates of growth and reproduction, exceptionally tolerant of pollution or, in many cases, all of the above.”
Garry Hamilton, <Super Species: The Species that will Dominate the Planet>, 2010
MMHESS will visit Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai, Tokyo, Kyoto, Gyeongju and Seoul to investigate and document the conflicts and negotiations between the traditional fabric of the city and the new urban transformations of globalization and its agencies. With the chaotic pace of development of its cities, the traditional fabric has become hybridized with the new to form mutant species of the urban terrain. Discussions of preservation and heritage can only progress under the rubric of national identity, tourism and marketability. In the turmoil of the urban survival of the fittest, strategies of negotiation ranges in the realms of Scale, Tectonics, Typology, Symbolism, Site, Supplements, Function, Performance, Objectification, and Decoration.
As biologists who embark on travels to far distant lands to discover new and hybrid species of the ecological system, we too embark on this trip to map out the hybrid species of the urban ecological system into a Manual of Mutants, Hybrids, Endangered, Super Species. MMHESS will investigate the morphology of natural selection of the urban territories. The intent is to map methodologies of survival between the old, the new, the old new and the new old.
