BackAlternatural is a project through which Gabriel Ruiz-Larrea invites us to reflect on humankind’s relationship with nature; a project that does not fit into any specific category, but which relates to the sculptural, to the architectural, and to landscaping.
With a length of 13 meters and a height varying between 1.8 and 2.8 meters, it is a structure of timber ribs with an external finish of bastard mortar prepared with cement, lime, sand, and black iron oxide. Alternatural functions as a connection between a field and a forest – domesticated and wild nature – and the intention is to make anyone crossing it reflect on the limits between them :“dismantle our binary thinking in order to break down dualisms like nature/culture, human/animal, territory/landscape, and inside/outside.”
As much on an artistic as on an architectural and academic level, Ruiz-Larrea is working on what he calls ‘post-nature,’ and his project arose from an endeavor to come up with a spatial expression of this idea.
