Alan Marshall (born 1975) is an Australian author, scholar, and artist working within the discipline of environmental studies. He is noted as a key scholar in environmental ethicsA designation given by AQA (see: J. Oliphant et al. AQA Religious Ethics for AS and A2, Routledge,978-0-203-83021-5: pp222., 2011) and by Julie Newman in "Green Philosophy: an A to Z Guide". Sage (2011). and for his investigations into eco-friendly cities of the future.Strochlic, N. (2018). "Here's What Our Cities Could Look Like in 2121". National Geographic. 233 (2).
Major projects In 2006, Alan Marshall founded The Ecomimicry ProjectThe DeGruyter's Handbook of the Circular Economy (2023) lists Alan Marshall as the inventor of ecomimicry, advancing his definition of it as: "the practice of designing socially-responsive and environmentally-responsible techniques and technologies for a particular local setting as inspired by the plants, animals, and ecosystems native to that local setting". See A. Marshall (2007) ‘The Theory and Practice of Ecomimicry’, Sustaining Gondwana Working Paper Series, Issue 3, published by Curtin University of Technology: Perth, or A. Marshall (2009) ‘Wild Design: The Ecomimicry Project’, published by North Atlantic Books: Berkeley. which melds ecology with innovation and sustainable art.
Examples of designs that emerged from this project include:
a Hemp Sail Battle Cruiser for the Royal Australian Navy (in which a navy ship had its engines 'designed-out' and in their stead it is powered by sails made from eco-friendly hemp) a manure-powered swimming pool heating system (in which a luxury pool is heated by the composted body waste of the swimmers) a hairy-roofed Carpathian mountain village where the architecture is adorned with an engineered protective material that mimics the fur of local brown bears.
These designs, illustrated by and large by Marshall, were compiled into the Wild Design book and then praised by the Australian art & design media.See, for example: Downton, P. (2009) Review of Wild Design, Artlink, Vol. 29, No. 4; and Wakely, M (2009) Design Inspired By Nature, ABC Radio National's By Design program.
In January 2013, Marshall started a "Future Green Cities" project which (as noted by CNNCNN (2017) Utopian cities of the future re-imagine life on Earth, CNN Style/Architecture, January 2017 and The Independent) explores graphic future scenarios of one-hundred super-ecofriendly cities across the world. Most of Marshall's original artworks from the project were part of a special exhibition at the Bauhaus MuseumSee 'Ways to Utopia', a special exhibition at the Bauhaus Museum. whilst the "Future London" cityscape from the project was displayed by the Museum of London as part of its 2018 London Visions exhibitionAravani, F. (17 January 2018), London Visions: what does your future London look like?, Museum of London and by the London Design Biennale as part of their 2021 exhibition at Somerset House.London Design Biennale is Back in Design Diffusion, May 4th 2021 edition. In 2015, the master-class part of this project conducted at Mahidol University was awarded the 2015 Kenneth M. Roemer Innovative Course Design Award by the Society for Utopian Studies.
The book of the project, Ecotopia 2121, written and illustrated by Marshall, has attracted broad critical acclaim.See for example: "Journeys Toward Ecotopia 2121". EuroScientist June 2016 issue; and G. Marino (2018) 'Fantasia al potere. Il futuro verde radicale di Ecotopia 2121' in Materia Rinnovabile, No 23-24. Along with the "Black Panther" movie and Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" novel, "Ecotopia 2121" was cited in Grist magazine's list of significant cli-fi works of art. The Times Higher Education review of Ecotopia 2121 stated "very few academics ever produce anything as stunning and imaginative as this", whilst National Geographic UK, Al Jazeera,Al Jazeera (2018) A 'Utopian Cities' project helps to imagine a global environmental future, Al Jazeera, Doha, May 2018 (in Arabic). ZMEScience,A. Micu, ''Ecotopia 2121 shows what perfectly eco-friendly cities would look like" ZMEScience, Jan 29th 2018. Lithuanian Radio Television, Forbes,Hintermayer, N. (2017) Urban Strategies: Utopia, Forbes (Austria), November 7th edn. and Publishers Weekly variously declared it "curious and creative", "adventurous", "impressive", "visionary", and "monumental". Ecotopia 2121 was put on Resurgence and Ecologist magazine's Book of the Year list, won a Silver Medal at the 2017 Nautilus Book Awards and placed 1st in the Future Forecasts category of the 2016 Green Book Festival. In turn, the book's "Future San Diego" cityscape was highlighted on the LA7 TV show Piazza PulitaPiazza Pulita's Instagram post about the clip is available here. during the pre-COP26 climate talks, whilst the "Future Tokyo" cityscape adorned the frontispiece of the book Green LeviathanMark Coeckelbergh (2021) Green Leviathan: Navigating Freedom in the Age of Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence, Routledge: London. by Belgian philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh, and the "Macau 2121" cityscape featured in the pages of the popular Arab women's magazine Sayidaty.The World's Cities in 2121, Sayidaty, February 2018 issue (in Arabic).
In late 2015, Marshall began a new project in urban ecology called FrankencitiesAs reported in: Micu, A (2018) "Ecotopia 2121 shows what perfectly eco-friendly cities would look like" ZMEScience, January issue, and which details the worst-case scenarios of emerging environmental problems in a series of cities around the world whilst comparing them to the insights offered by the Frankenstein story. The Daily Express and VICE reported that Marshall's work on Frankenstein extended to critiquing the popular idea that Mary Shelley was inspired to write the original Frankenstein novel because she was affected by a volcanically-induced climate change event known as the Year Without a Summer.A film co-produced by Alan Marshall that introduces the story of the purported connections between the Year Without a Summer and the "Frankenstein" novel was screened at the "Westside Mountain Film Festival" in Epirus, Greece in August 2021. In 2020, Marshall penned an article for The Conversation that critiqued these purported connections.
For the Frankencities project and for the Ecotopia 2121 project, Marshall developed a novel urban design methodology known as The Literary Method of Urban DesignSee, for example: 'The Literary Method of Urban Design', The Conversation, March 15th 2019. which is not so much about design but more about inventing new social change strategies.See for example: Marshall, A. (2018) 'The Fantasy Method of Urban Design', Diseña 12, February 2018 issue -- available in Spanish and English via Diseña. A film scripted by Marshall about this methodology was published by National Geographic Indonesia"Memprediksi Perkotaan Masa Depan dengan Bantuan Karya Sastra", National Geographic Indonesia, March 18th, 2019. and became an "official selection" at a number of film festivals across AsiaThe Literary Method of Urban Design movie was screened as part of the Kuala Lumpur Environmental Film Festival (Malaysia), the 9FilmFest (Bangkok, Thailand), and the "To Save and Protect" Ecological Film and TV Festival in Khanty-Mansiysk (Siberia). and Europe.For example, The Literary Method of Urban Design movie was part of the Саратовские Страдания Docudrama Film Festival (Saratov, Russia) and the 2021 Edukino festival held at the Zacheta, the Polish National Museum of Contemporary Art. As well, a series of Marshall's artworks produced via the Literary Method of Urban Design are being displayed in the Tartu Ülikooli Kunstimuuseum as part of Tartu's 2024 celebrations as the European Capital of Culture.
In 2020, Marshall began the Global Sheeplands project which investigates the ways that sheep have contributed to the making of the ancient and modern worlds.An article summarizing this project appeared in Wales Arts Review An educational movie directed by Marshall that also summarized the project won "Best Educational Movie" at the Wales International Film Festival for Children and was also screened at the 2021 RAM Film Festival in Rovereto, Italy and at the 12th Edukino film festival held in Warsaw, Poland. As part of this project, Marshall wrote a book called Sheeplands and also made on-screen contributions to a two-hour Arte / NDR TV documentary about the history of sheep farming and shepherding.See a preview for this documentary at this website here. Because Sheeplands follows the ten-thousand year long journey of shepherds from the neolithic Levant to Iron Age Wales, Marshall was invited as an opening speaker to the 2024 Hay Festival hosted in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye.
Prior to his 21st century work in the eco-design field, Marshall was mainly involved in eco-philosophy and techno-criticism. In the 1990s, Marshall developed a postmodern version of the Human–Nature relationship,Marshall, A (1998) A Postmodern Natural History of the World, "Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science", Part C, Vol. 34 Part C, No 1, 137-164 one that throws into doubt the idea that Nature is a united orderly system.Marshall, A (2002) 'The Unity of Nature: Wholeness and Disintegration in Ecology and Science', Imperial College Press/World Scientific: London & Singapore. Marshall's approach is heavily influenced by the science of ecology but has been criticisedde Laplante, K. (2004) Environmental Alchemy: How to turn Ecological Science into Ecological Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, Vol 26, Winter Issue. as privileging one school of ecology, i.e., plant sociology, over others such as systems ecology and the ecology of Gaia—both of which he critiques as shallow forms of environmentalism.Alan Marshall (2002) The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press/World Scientific: London & Singapore. Indeed, his book The Unity of Nature is one of the fiercest critiques of Systems Theory in general, and Gaia Theory and Chaos Theory in particular.