Currently writing a piece on hybrids and explaining why it is relevant to space analysis and design, architecture and urban. In fact hybrids embody what I label as “mental mobility”. They live in “ecotones”, in transition zones between two ecosystems, in fluid and liminal spaces. We often relate hybridity with power or with cosmic power. In the “spaces of flows” and in our “liquid society”, looking at hybridity, however fictitious – we are all hybrids after all – is a way to argue for a design that is open to re-assembly and re-configuration.

The photograph above is from a temple that I visited when in Sri Lanka. The Makara “has the lower jaw of a crocodile, the snout or trunk of an elephant, the tusks and ears of a wild boar, the darting eyes of a monkey, the scales and flexible body of a fish, and the swirling tail feathers of a peacock.”