Exploring "DIGITAL ECOLOGY" as a tool for environmental conservation through : The design of a virtual eco-pack for Port Elizabeth

This treatise deals with the design of a new Virtual Eco-Park and humankind's relationship to the natural world. The cultural institution of captivity has been positive and negative for the study and conservative approaches of fauna and flora. While this has had benefits, it has resulted in a dominated mindset over the 'other'. This treatise looks at the zoo and aquarium as an outdated educational platform and proposes a new perspective. This treatise explores 'digital ecology' as a tool of theoretical application. The intention is to provide environmental conservation. The design will use the virtual medium for a new immersive experience instead of the 'live exhibit'. The 'digital ecology' is also seen as spatial stacking of layers. Using Timothy Lukes theories on the three natures, this thesis applies this theory in a post-anthropocentric way by its role in generating the Virtual Eco-Park. The layers are terrestrial as an ecosystem, the territorial as the built environment and the digital as the immersive experience. These components form the skeleton of the application to the site. The Port Elizabeth manganese ore and tank farm and the surrounding area has been a dump and polluted landscape for forty years. This treatise, in its entirety, has set up an urban framework that promotes a reconnection to the ecological systems in Port Elizabeth. The 'digital ecology' and the Virtual Eco Park as a 'building' intends to regenerate/ reestablish an old industrial landscape into a new park. The building is designed to become a component of the landscape and not an object on the landscape. The result of this research will result in a final design that hosts immersive experience—bringing the 'true wild' into the urban landscape by replacing the 'tamed natural'—thereby solving the Anthropocene of the Zoo building type by reframing it as the virtual eco-park of nature.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Science, School of Environmental Sciences, 202