Emma Kaufmann LaDuc is an interdisciplinary architect working within urban and rural territories. Her research seeks to both pluralize and localize spatial practice, thinking through resilient systems and acting through collaborative interventions. Emma is research assistant at the ETH Zurich under the Chair of Affective Architectures and the Chair of Being Alive and head of an experimental unit at the AA Summer School in London, as well as member of the interdisciplinary collective La Rivoluzione delle Seppie.

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Olea europaea. I pass the silver olives in an uneven row, here overgrown under the overpass. Some have some parasitic mass, mistletoe maybe. I have become so used to the smaller kind, pollarded and ordered in a grid. Anthropogenic and anthropomorphic like an old grandmother, they stand small in demeanor with leathery, wrinkled bark; and like an old grandmother, they have seen this village change, having lived a hundred years and living still a hundred more. When its branches are cut, as in ritual, encouraged to hang low so that the fruits may be accessible - might this be heard as a response to a call already there? The fruits, shining and perfect, encourage us, as animals, call us to take their seed and spread them. They form our habits, we form them. In turn they form our way of life, our markets and thus our villages and cities. Call and response and response becomes the call. In the end, have we domesticated the olive tree, or has the olive tree domesticated us?