Embrace the imagination – in order to develop new worlds

Futurefarmers: Multidisciplinary Imagination

1995-present

Europe North America

An artist and research platform supporting projects that explore inter-relations between people and planet by focusing on rural space and food production; members’ multidisciplinary backgrounds diversify its methods, frequently combining scientific and traditional approaches to land

Context

If professionalisation risks creating territorial approaches to specialisms and rifts between different ways of knowing and doing, then multidisciplinary collaborations promise a more holistic approach to sharing ideas and learning. This kind of approach is precisely what climate breakdown demands because climate is not a single-topic issue and climate justice cannot be achieved in only one way and from only one geographic or cultural perspective.

Practice

Since the mid-1990s, the platform Futurefarmers has gathered artists, architects, programmers, farmers, writers, designers, and activists in North America and Europe to work together in exploring climate-related topics. Futurefarmers welcome all sorts of participatory research methods that broaden perspectives and consider ecosystems and human cultures in symbiotic relation. Members support each others’ projects through collaboration or advice. Projects are long-term and prioritise practice and process over objecthood and exhibition.

Projects have included building a communal bakehouse and a seed exchange to raise awareness about food supply chains, seed privatisation, and extinction.¹ Such projects invite audiences to consider where food comes from, and to publicly criticise the copyrighting of seed species by agricultural giants such as Monsanto. Discussion and education programmes accompany each project to nurture public discourse on climate justice.

Futurefarmers’ strength lies in using imaginative metaphors and activities to nurture local engagement as a planetary kind of responsibility. The platform also exemplifies an important method of collaborative practice in the way it has grown and evolved due to its varied collaborators and the professional or regional focus they bring to projects. An annual artist-in-residency programme brings new members to the platform, growing a network of previous or continuing collaborators. Organised as an organic kind of coalition, with multiple working groups located in different regions, the platform retains a flexibility that is vital for addressing the fluid dynamics of climate breakdown. As Futurefarmer member Lode Vranken explains,

“most of the projects start by just hanging around. We meet people, something starts and it becomes physical. But then because something happens, people get enthusiastic and the projects that started small begin to grow. Possibilities grow as well, and quite often the support then grows in terms of budget and scope.”²

Notes

1
For example, Seed Journey (2016-17) was a project that travelled by wind-powered sailing ship from Oslo to Istanbul, tracing the path of wheat seeds to their origin as a combined form of phylogeny and social history. A crew of artists, wayfarers, scientists, and writers sailed the ship, carrying exhibition materials and species of seeds that were originally imported to Northern Europe from the Middle East – some of which are now very rare. The ship was a vehicle, a metaphor, for global solidarity against globalisation, its route returning seeds to a region that the Global North has historically exploited. The use of renewable energy for the ship’s wind-powered journey drew attention to the catastrophic ecological footprint of many foods that are flown, cargo-shipped, and driven across the world today.
2
‘Futurefarmers’, 14 June 2021 <https://www.the-nomad-magazine.com/futurefarmers-amy-franceschini-and-lode-vranken> [accessed 3 May 2019].

Local Code: Architecture as Politics

1993

New York, USA

A book that exposes the need for architecture to respond to the unique conditions of places, such as climate, culture, and community; using language and code as design tools, the volume provokes readers to rethink future scenarios and design practices

Context

Criticism of master planning as a top-down, authoritative approach has gained momentum since the 1970s, raising questions about its predictability and relevance in a rapidly changing world. However, the vision of cities as “engines of growth”¹ has been prevalent in urban development and planning, failing to address issues of poverty, inequality, and marginalisation, and even worsened urban segregation. The lack of flexibility and responsiveness of building and zoning codes to the changing needs and demands in the city is highly problematic leading to insensitive and homogenised urban environments that do not reflect the diversity of local communities. In addition, top-down planning tends to address issues of climate through technical methods and hard infrastructure, with the aim to adapt or mitigate rather than deal with root causes or social engagement. But what about the collective power of citizens calling for public efforts and interventions to rectify imbalances in opportunities and responsibilities?²

Practice

Michael Sorkin’s Local Code is a comprehensive project that explores the relationship between urban design, architecture, and local codes and how these elements can shape and influence the design of the cities. The project is presented as a set of “rules” but is best read as a prompt to think about different instruments with which to approach urban design. It deals with the idea that design should be driven by local codes that reflect the unique needs, values, and climatic conditions of a specific place. The book presents a comprehensive view of the city, outlining the rights and duties of its inhabitants through a Bill of Rights, Community Expectations, and Design Guidelines for building a city located at 42 degrees north latitude. Rather than embracing a simplistic view of environmental determinism, Sorkin emphasises that the appearance and evolution of a city is less about architects expressing themselves and more about using form to advance social, cultural, and economic goals through conscious planning. He argues that the conventional approach to building and zoning codes, which are often seen as mandatory to follow, fail to reflect the needs and desires of local communities, arguing that city regulations should prioritise and reflect those needs on different scales.

Local Code’s apparently highly prescriptive and technical approach to urban design intends to provoke spatial planners to re-consider the ways of working and thinking about the cities, challenging the idea of the all-powerful planner and authority. It exposes the self-referential nature of municipal codes, critiquing the conventional idea of the masterplan’s one-size-fits-all approach. Sorkin used Local Code as a template and a writing exercise for students to collectively develop their own codes and policies regarding future practice. Such an approach to the study of urban design and planning acknowledges the political nature of spatial practices and architecture, negotiating the importance of propinquity (proximity) in shaping the built environment. Ultimately, the book can be used as a tool to comprehend and connect the various elements that make up a participatory democracy to the forms that enable and embody it. While not focussed on climate, Local Code is relevant to the thinking of spatial design through a set of protocols and rights, including those of the non-human.

Notes

1
Willem van Vliet, “Cities in a Globalizing World: From Engines of Growth to Agents of Change.” Environment and Urbanization 14, no. 1 (April 2002), pp. 31-40 <https://doi.org/10.1177/095624780201400103>
2
Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great American Cities (London: Bodley Head, 2020).

Half Earth Socialism: Simulating Liveable Futures

2022

Book and video game that present a theoretical approach to achieving a balance between human needs and the health of the planet, in an age of ecological crisis

Context

The challenge of balancing the provision of basic necessities for all while protecting the planet is known as the “planetary boundaries” debate. The requirement to organise and regulate humanity’s interactions with nature is in opposition to the unchecked and expansive nature of capital. Although there are numerous estimates of the planetary boundaries, even the most advanced models like Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) ) which integrate physics, chemistry, biology, and economics, do not fully model post growth scenarios that would ensure ecological stability. Simple IAM examples like “DICE” or “PAGE” are frequently employed to estimate the “social cost of carbon”, which quantifies the economic costs and benefits associated with emitting an additional metric ton of CO2. IAMs are predicated on the assumption that economic growth will continue uninterrupted and that the basic structure of the capitalist system will remain unchanged. This is not due to a lack of technical expertise, but because the models are based on an illusion that addressing climate change can be simplified into a straightforward mathematical equation, rather than through considering radical systemic change.¹ The path towards a just and ecologically sustainable world requires significant changes to current economic and political systems, as well as a shift in values and priorities.

Practice

Half-Earth Socialism (HES) provides a roadmap towards this goal by recognising the interconnected nature of environmental and social issues and proposing a systemic solution that prioritises both ecological and social well-being.² It was developed through essays, a book, and a video game advocating for the protection of intact ecosystems as a means to slow the ongoing climate breakdown. Drawing from E.O. Wilson’s influence, the Half-Earth Socialism concept is centred around the idea of preserving at least half of the earth’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity for rewilding.³ It critiques the notion of conservation without social cost and calls for more precise concepts to analyse human-nature interactions. While acknowledging Indigenous sovereignty and the Land Back movement, HES questions the compatibility of neo-protectionism with capitalism and asserts that a true solution to the biodiversity crisis can only be achieved in a post-capitalist society.

One of HES components is a video game aiming to make decision-making in the face of environmental challenges more accessible and graspable. It proposes, using an information system, to see how different goods relate to each other as a whole, measured in food and carbon molecules, rather than relying on labor time or money as a universal metric. The aim is to directly address trade-offs and make conscious decisions about regulating humanity’s relationship with nature, rather than replicating the market system. Designed as a thought-experiment, it provides a simulation where an eco-socialist revolution takes place and the United Nations transform into a global parliament, with nations and regions functioning as federated units with their own powers, prioritising democracy and inclusivity. This new global government must plan the world economy while balancing human needs and planetary boundaries. A new bureau, Gosplant, is created to estimate trade-offs and devise various futures with different energy use, technological progress, and rewilding efforts. Players acting as planetary planners can make decisions through various options of technologies, policies, and infrastructures.

This approach calls for a rethinking of land use practices, a transition to a low-carbon economy, and the protection of natural ecosystems, with the goal of creating a society based on care, equality, and unalienated labour. It also provides hands-on experience regarding a deeper understanding of the complex issues around sustainability and environmental crisis, making decision-making more tangible and easier to understand. The model is based on wide-scale future scenario building, and so provides a broad context in which spatial practice might be located in the future, asking the designer to consider interrelationships within which any object, infrastructure, or spatial condition is located.

Notes

1
Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, ‘Planning An Eco-Socialist Utopia’, Noēma, 2 June 2022 <https://www.noemamag.com/planning-an-eco-socialist-utopia/> [accessed 12 February 2023].
2
Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass, “Towards Half-Earth Socialism”, contribution to GTI Forum “Conservation at the Crossroads,” Great Transition Initiative (May 2022) <https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/conservation-vettese-pendergrass> [accessed 12 February 2023].
3
Troy Vettese, Drew Pendergrass, and Filip Mesko, “Town, Country and Wilderness: Planning the Half‐Earth.” Architectural Design 92, no. 1 (January 2022), pp. 112-19 <https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2780>

Wretched of the Earth: Race Matters

2015-present

Global

A coalition of climate justice groups led by Indigenous people and people of colour who organise talks, campaigns, and publications to address eco-racism and white privilege in direct action tactics for climate justice

Context

Several climate groups have been criticised for failing to think sufficiently about how racism is woven into capitalism’s environmentally damaging practices, how differences of race and class can alienate activists from one other, and how the use of activist tactics such as civil disobedience put people of colour at disproportionate risk of arrest and imprisonment.¹

Practice

Naming themselves in honour of the Martiniquian political philosopher Frantz Fanon’s book on anti-colonial theory, Wretched of the Earth Coalition represents the interests of the Global South and people of colour in the context of climate change and climate justice activism.² The coalition has participated in marches and direct action campaigns, and has written open letters highlighting several critiques of environmentalist action.³ They base their actions and publications on three salient ideas. First, the idea that hierarchies akin to colonialism will only repeat themselves if climate activists suppress the voices of Indigenous people and people of colour in climate protests. Second, a critique of climate protests such as those organised by Extinction Rebellion, for pronouncing apocalyptic diagnoses for the planet. Such pronouncements erase the experience of Indigenous people and people of colour who have faced genocide and ecocide for centuries.⁴ Third, an understanding of privilege. The coalition states that directives for climate action should consider the way activist tactics assume white privilege by promoting strategies such as street protests that endanger Indigenous activists and activists of colour who account for a disproportionate number of people arrested, brutalised, and imprisoned.⁵

Wretched of the Earth’s organisational structure as a decentralised coalition has the potential to democratise governance by bringing different interests together to collaborate, often temporarily, in a partnership towards a common goal, without centring around one dominant organisation or leader. Climate’s intersectional nature requires precisely this kind of multiplicity of perspectives.⁶ Practices of universal design, for example, could learn from this approach in considering an expanded ecology of users and implications. Wretched of the Earth’s organisation as a coalition, meanwhile, demonstrates the potential of working in flexible alliances that draw from members’ various disciplinary and professional skills (including law, policy, design, organising) to work across different contexts and with different methods, towards a shared goal of environmental justice.

Notes

1
For example, Extinction Rebellion. See Karen Bell and Gnisha Bevan. “Beyond Inclusion? Perceptions of the Extent to Which Extinction Rebellion Speaks to, and for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Working-Class Communities”. Local Environment 26, 10 (3 October 2021), pp. 1205-20 <https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2021.1970728>.
2
Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox ; Introductions by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Grove Press, 2004).
3
The Wretched of the Earth, ‘An Open Letter to Extinction Rebellion’, (3 May 2019) <https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/> [accessed 21 November 2023].
4
The coalition emphasises the year 1492 as a watershed moment when European colonisers landed in the Americas and initiated settler and plantation colonialism, incurring lethal climate change through environmentally racist extractive and exploitative practices.
5
Damien Gayle, ‘Does Extinction Rebellion Have a Race Problem?’ The Guardian, 4 October 2019, sec. Environment <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/04/extinction-rebellion-race-climate-crisis-inequality> [accessed 10 November 2022].
6
Matthew Taylor, ‘The Evolution of Extinction Rebellion’. The Guardian, 4 August 2020, sec. Environment <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/04/evolution-of-extinction-rebellion-climate-emergency-protest-coronavirus-pandemic> [accessed 10 November 2022].

Future Materials Bank: Generous Knowledge-Sharing

2021-present

Maastricht, Netherlands London, UK

A crowd-sourced online archive of materials that supports and promotes transitions towards more sustainable artistic practices, and provides workshops and open-access resources on sustainable materials and methods

Context

Given the significant environmental cost of using new materials, including in art and design contexts, and the abundance of so-called waste material that is steadily filling landfills and seas, a shift to a circular design strategy of reuse and recycling is paramount. Knowledge of what recycled material is available, how it can be sourced, and how it functions is often limited or isolated – to the detriment of artists, designers and students searching for alternative and more environmentally careful ways of working. So, how might spatial practitioners, including artists, designers, and students access such information, add to it, share it, and therefore make responsible decisions when selecting materials? How might they learn more about where materials come from, who makes them, and how?

Practice

The Future Materials Bank is an open-source database containing information about up-cycled, recycled, and repurposed materials. Its approach resonates with other open-source databases, from early examples such as Whole Earth Catalog to Wikipedia today. The Bank offers a panoply of options for sourcing materials whose supply chains are ethically responsible regarding both labour practices and ecological care. Definitions of ethical responsibility are provided in a Lexicon section within the Bank’s website. Extending beyond a standard specification tool for sourcing materials, the Bank functions as a more imaginative provocation and a more nuanced way of thinking about materials and circularity. The Bank is designed with a holistic approach to these considerations, assessing a material across criteria that concern “usability, eco-friendliness, social circumstances, and afterlife”.¹

The Bank presents information in a transparent approach by accounting for a material’s history, including the material and labour processes required in its manufacture. For example, fish leather is presented via the work of a London-based artist who collects refuse from a fish market and, after drying the fish skin, uses it as an alternative to leather. The artist’s process is described alongside the ecological value of reinterpreting waste as source material. Such transparent documentation of process and rationale could incentivise an ethics of accountability by revealing the exploitative nature of methods that extract raw materials and exploit cheap labour.

The Bank’s diversification of materials encourages a crucial shift in attitudes from a preference for new material towards an interest and optimism in materials that have histories. This shift also encourages a different temporality in popular perceptions of materials. Rather than new stuff, materials with longer biographies could become popular first, and then the norm.

Notes

1
See ‘Material Policy – Future Materials Bank’<https://www.futurematerialsbank.com/material-policy/> [accessed 5 November 2023].

Ignoring Other ways of being and doing

Business as usual controls activity through a narrowly defined set of behaviours compatible with capitalist modes of production and privatised profit. Its control of the dominant modes of knowledge and action excludes other ways of being and doing. Other ways of being and doing are often marginalised as unrealistic or irrelevant, thereby wasting the potential they hold for facing climate breakdown. This ignoring is fatal in the face of climate breakdown because the disrupted world cannot be fixed with the same methods that broke it: other forms beyond the dominant need to be recovered.

Separating Forms of Knowledge

Academia and wider societal structures organise themselves by separating disciplines based on particular forms of knowledge. Disciplinary boundaries are guarded, with certain ways of knowing overriding others so that technocratic and market-compatible activities dominate. The technocratic approach to climate breakdown splits it into distinct conditions to which specific methodologies and techniques are applied. However, climate does not respect such disciplinary boundaries, and so needs to be treated through trans- and inter-disciplinary thinking, understanding the world as a network of situated relations. Architecture in its breadth of approaches, from the humanities to science, is well placed in this respect.

Culture

Dominant cultural attitudes are implicated in the production of climate breakdown and limit potential ways of facing it. Assumptions around the primacy of progress, growth, reason, and order suppress or ignore other cultural approaches. At the same time, the prevailing culture of the architectural profession prioritises high art over labour, external aesthetics over human welfare, and works “for” rather than “with” target groups in its approach. Anthropocentric ways of seeing the world as a set of problems to be fixed leads to technocratic and divided mindsets. Against this, climate breakdown requires relational and diverse ways of thinking and acting. Culture becomes a shared realm, not the domain of the privileged few. The ideas, customs, and behaviours of architecture as we know it are only one way of understanding, creating, and occupying space. Architecture’s professionalised and academic culture has profound effects on climate, whether by normalising the extraction of materials from the earth or discarding waste back into it, or overly relying on techno-fix solutionism. Rethinking cultural approaches to and of spatial practices enables their transformation.

Knowledge

The way that climate is conceived determines how it is addressed. Knowledge systems are still dominated by Eurocentric and imperial modes of modernity, which reduce the planet and its peoples to forms of logic and control. Knowledge, including that of architecture, is guarded canon. Within this closed system, vocabularies of scientific reason exclude and devalue other ways of knowing, not least those developed in other cultures and regions. Within these systems of epistemological power, climate becomes another abstraction, subject to human manipulation. Humankind is separated from nature, enabling nature’s exploitation. However, the devastating ecological impact of such a limited canon of thinking is now so apparent as to demand other ways of thinking and knowing, which admit to human vulnerability in contrast to the presumed authority of previous times. Different ways of knowing enable different ways of being and acting, with architecture released from its conventional confines. Such an approach sees expertise everywhere, surfacing forms of knowledge that have been suppressed by modernity.

Architecture is Climate

Sarah Bovelett

Anthony Powis

Tatjana Schneider

Christina Serifi

Jeremy Till

Becca Voelcker

Embrace the imagination – in order to develop new worlds