Connect multiple forms of knowledge – to cut across disciplines, scales, and geographies

Constructive Land: Reforming Materials, Regenerating Landscapes

2019-present

London and North Yorkshire, UK

An academic-industry partnership programme of research, experimental pedagogy, and prototyping—looking into lesser-used timber as building materials, and making links between construction techniques, supply chains, and large-scale landscape management

Context

It is both blatantly obvious and too often forgotten that materials come from landscapes, and that those landscape are shaped by the way we produce and use materials. In order to meet the demands particularly of the construction and agricultural sectors, rural land is industrialised through intensive, often monocultural forms of management. Such degenerative forms of material and food production, especially under the pressure of the market, can be highly destructive resulting biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and damaging local economies.

This is not to say, however, that landscapes—and particularly woodland—should be left alone. Diverse ecologies thrive on disturbance, and human intervention can be positive. What Constructive Land suggests is that in order for this to be the case, we need to rethink what we mean by “productive” woodland, and the values reflected in this definition.

Practice

Constructive Land is an ongoing project by the architectural research practice Material Cultures in collaboration with Forestry England and the Spatial Practices programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. It considers the impact of existing timber construction systems on the British landscape, including the effects of standardisation, market-determination, and fragmentation of the construction industry. As the demand for bio-based materials such as timber increases due to its key part in the decarbonisation of the built environment, landscapes are subject to increasing and competing economic and ecological pressures.

Constructive Land aims to develop alternative regenerative material cultures through a combination of practical and material research ranging from on-site activities in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, to contextual and strategic research into the relations between material, land, and building systems. The project includes a significant educational programme of building a new ecological curriculum in post-carbon construction.

Exploring alternatives to building with materials from monoculture plantations, researchers on the project engage with the larger construction system to investigate possibilities beyond established industrial practices.¹ They promote unused species, cut in sustainable ways, for example, using round wood, coppiced wood and ungraded wood that are not conventionally selected for industrial purposes. Working with students, the researchers detail and build at a 1:1 scale prototype ideas while offering students construction and project management experience. They describe the project’s aims as follows:

“By questioning the nature of a “productive” woodland, our project will investigate the different benefits and outcomes of woodland management, from climate resilience to increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Productive woodlands have the potential to source innovative new low embodied carbon materials which could transform the built environment, whilst also building regional supply chains across the country. The recalibration of our landscapes away from extractive practices toward a new model of regenerative land management, one which fosters regenerative resources, provides an exciting opportunity for construction innovation.”²

Constructive Land proposes to reimagine the relationship between buildings, landscapes, and materials, incorporating traditional materials with new ways of building, and new forms of agriculture and forestry management. It also suggests that linking with other industries, such as Forestry England and Woods into Management, might enable more holistic and resource-conscious decision-making to benefit social infrastructures and climates alike.

Notes

1
Summer Islam, ‘Production Studies: Production Pedagogies’, Central Saint Martins, London, 17 November 2022.
2
‘2021 European Research Prize: Constructive Land’, SOM Foundation <https://somfoundation.com/fellow/gormley-islam/> [accessed 13 December 2022].

Hunnarshala Foundation: Building the Future

2001-present

Bhuj, Gujarat, India

A collective of professionals, artisans, and craftsmen working at the grassroots level who invest in vocational training and research into traditional knowledge systems, working with communities for inclusive development, and resilience against climate change

Context

Conventional construction practices lack both ecological and social sensitivity. In addition, the use of concrete, which requires a high amount of energy and resources to produce, often neglects local craft knowledge and materials, resulting in the loss of cultural heritage and identity. When in January 2001, a powerful earthquake hit the western Indian state of Gujarat, thousands of people lost their homes. The earthquake engendered serious criticism of construction and engineering practices that are highly hierarchical and regulated and mainly rely on concrete construction.¹ Local artisans are often too far away from the engineer’s role in the construction chain creating a division between the formal and informal construction sectors. This insight led to the emergence of informal associations who rely on mutual support and reconstruction in the aftermath.

Practice

Hunnarshala Foundation emerged from such an informal association, comprising architects, engineers, environmental advocates, artisans, local builders, and citizens. The Foundation developed hybrid construction techniques that harness local knowledge and materials such as stone, earth, thatch, and bamboo. They primarily deal with the development of housing and infrastructure for marginalized communities, but also restore and conserve historic buildings and monuments.

Bhunga, a traditional rounded dwelling made of rammed earth capable of withstanding earthquakes, provided a starting point for Hunnarshala to experiment with powdered clay and reclaimed wood reinforcements for the rammed earth. Such experimentation engages artists, artisans, and architects in collaborative learning and co-design. Addressing the extensive use of energy-intensive industrialised materials like cement and steel in India’s building industry and the decline of traditional artisanal practices, the Foundation established a permanent education and entrepreneurship initiative called Karigarshala in 2011. Karigarshala focuses on training dropouts from the formal educational system, aged 16-18, in carpentry and masonry to help them find work as artisans. Becoming a hub of learning and co-development, Hunnarshala also facilitates a two-year training scheme in entrepreneurship and fosters a wide network of business and artisan alumni in India (Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir, and Bihar) and beyond (Iran, Indonesia, and Afghanistan). All new materials and techniques are extensively tested in its laboratory in Bhuj, while the Foundation collaborates with local governments to establish technical guidelines that are incorporated into regional manuals for new construction.

Hunnarshala Foundation recognises the urgent need to address climate breakdown by advocating for ecological sensitivity in building practices and encourages building less as the primary principle. This design approach that connects disciplines, knowledges, contemporary and traditional methods, recognises that ancient technologies and local materials can ultimately inform modern approaches and co-produce climate-responsive material and social spaces.

Notes

1
High Powered Committee Report on National Disaster Management, ed. by the Ministry of Agriculture (New Delhi, 2001).

Zuloark: Working Lines / Liquid Hierarchies

2001-present

Madrid, Spain

Distributed architectural and urbanism open office that enquires into new ways of urban practice aiming to create dynamic and collaborative working environments, building a radically open cooperative structure and embracing multiple levels of agency

Context

At the end of the 1990s in Europe, new models of partnership and collaborative work emerged in architecture that challenged the idea of traditional practice associated with the figure of the “master architect” or “starchitect”. As part of a larger movement towards more democratic approaches to design and building, multiple groups sought to challenge the hierarchical and centralised structures that had dominated the architectural field for many years, and to develop more collaborative, participatory, and environmentally responsible practices. These groups were formed mostly by students and young professionals drawing on radical self-organisation and horizontal models. They sought to involve the citizens in the design process, looking that their needs, aspirations, and perspectives were incorporated into the architectural work. This shift towards a more socially engaged approach reflected a broader understanding of architecture’s responsibility and role, moving beyond its sole focus on objects and form.

Practice

The Spanish group Zuloark have practiced architecture as a cooperative for more than 20 years, through a constantly evolving structure. Zuloark understand architecture as a relational practice involved in the local and the social, and less interested in the building as an endgame, a stylised object. One of the most important projects of Zuloark is the collective itself, which has been conceived as a living entity: a flexible and hybrid structure that over the years has allowed the practice to grow and survive. They are organised through liquid hierarchies, moving away from the pyramidal system which is encountered in many architecture studios.¹ All members have different roles in each project, so that decision-making is constantly distributed amongst everyone. Through an internal voting process, every six months different members are responsible for Zuloark’s economy, governance, internal, and external communication. Their overarching ethos revolves around continuous questioning and reconfiguration of their ways of working and relating.

Since their formation, Zuloark has taken a critical stance on the relationship between architecture and ecological breakdown. One of their key focuses is promoting upcycling policies and the reuse of materials when building is absolutely necessary. They prioritise the careful planning of projects, considering the entire life cycle of materials involved, seeking to minimise waste, and ensuring that their projects have the potential to be disassembled and repurposed for other uses in the future.² Zuloark’s relational approach leads them to understanding space in multiple ways, from the social to the operational – as shown in their work on Madrid’s open spaces. Together with many local agents and the Regional Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) they developed an open platform mapping all the gardens and auxiliary spaces in Madrid, providing visibility, appropriating open green spaces, and recognising neighbourhood initiatives for their valuable contribution to the collective production of the city.

Following Lev Vygotsky’s notion of Zone of Proximal Development, they perceive their work as a platform where individuals can learn and develop new skills with the guidance and support of others. They create an environment where knowledge, expertise, and experiences are shared, allowing team members to learn from each other and collectively push the boundaries of their capabilities.³

Zuloark’s approach to architecture seeks to challenge traditional models of decision making and authority which are proven inadequate to address the challenges posed by climate while focusing on the symptoms and not the causes of climate breakdown. Zuloark embraces a democratic and participatory approach while reflecting an architectural practice which is radically open, collaborative, and diverse, embracing conflict, difference, and multiple levels of agency. Their emphasis on participatory decision-making embodies a larger socio-ecological vision, acknowledging the interconnectedness of social, environmental, and economic factors. Such a practical and theoretical approach to architecture aims to create more adaptive and resilient working and built environments.

Notes

1
Juan Francisco, Fuentes-Lojo, ‘Zuloark Cumple 20 Años y Nos Cuenta Las Claves Para Seguir Vivo’, NEO2, 4 May 2021 <https://www.neo2.com/zuloark/> [accessed 16 November 2022].
2
Megan Townsend, ‘Zuloark: The Rebellious Design Group Creating Jaw-Dropping Spaces – All to Be Recyled’, The Independent <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/design/zuloark-design-group-recycling-communist-madrid-architects-photos-spain-a8356216.html> [accessed 30 June 2023].
3
Zuloark, ‘Life-Work Propositions’, in Making Futures, <https://www.making-futures.com/zuloark-life-work-propositions/> [accessed 16 November 2022].

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].

Distributed Design Platform: A model for post-growth production

2017-present

Europe

A network of networks to connect and promote organisations involved in designing and creating alternatives to the norms of how things are designed, sold, distributed, and used

Context

We need tools: things, materials, products, devices, infrastructures, machines, and components that allow us to do things. Who designs and makes these tools? In a globalised economy, they are conceived, manufactured, and eventually disposed of far away from their point of use, and with little opportunity for users to intervene in any of those stages: to customise these tools; to reuse, remake, or resell them; or to learn and develop skills in the process. Materials and products circulating in these closed loops are bound to become waste: late capitalism’s assertion of individual rather than collective ownership binds objects by their own obsolescence through infrastructures that distance people from the production of the things they use.

Practice

Following the international maker movement and growing campaigns for a right to repair, the Distributed Design Platform—an initiative of Creative Europe—is a network of networks to connect, fund, and promote organisations involved in designing and creating alternatives to the norms of how things are designed, sold, distributed, and used. That alternative, “distributed design” is one in which processes of design, manufacture, and reuse are opened up: moving from a consumption-based to a participation-based material culture. Its name reflects Doughnut Economics’ call to “Design to Distribute”—not only wealth and resources, but also control.

Despite its very material nature, Distributed Design is in many ways a direct result of the increasing accessibility of digital design and fabrication tools at smaller scales, and the resulting opportunities for mass factory-based production to be replaced by networks of manufacture. The Distributed Design Platform realises one such network by connecting design and educational programmes, “fab labs” and maker spaces, cultural-sector organisations and industry bodies through a “digital ecosystem” including existing networked initiatives such as make.works and fablabs.io. The Platform hosts events, produces publications, and generally serves to advocate for a form of open design which combines local and small-scale manufacture with wide-ranging international collaboration and knowledge sharing.¹ By responding to the increasing digitalisation of both design and production—so-called “Industry 4.0”²—the Platform aims to create a space through which designers can bring new open-source products and systems into the market.

Allowing access to design processes, and open-sourcing product design, has very direct and material effects in relation to the consumptive and resource-heavy systems that dominate industrial design. The byproduct, which the Distributed Design Platform brings into the fore, is the associated effects on knowledge, skills, and capacity when control is distributed amongst a design ecosystem. That is, by creating new design processes and infrastructures, new types of hybrid designers emerge, where design knowledge is not confined within professional silos. As the Open-Design Education Network puts it: “we pursue the creation of innovative experiences that allow the flow of information and the socialization of knowledge […] promoting autarky, reciprocity, cooperative models, and commitment to the environment. Building spaces to nurture distributed design, then, also fosters the development of wider socio-economic-cultural innovations towards post-growth economies”³—and Distributed Design Platform becomes a model which challenges the assumptions of growth on which previous design models are based.

Notes

1
This form of interconnected infrastructure of small parts is also known as cosmopolitan localism or “cosmolocalism”. See COSMOLOCALISM | design global, manufacture local <https://www.cosmolocalism.eu> [accessed 25 October 2023].
2
Distributed Design Platform, ed., This Is Distributed Design: Making a New Local & Global Design Paradigm (Barcelona: Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, 2021) <https://distributeddesign.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/This-Is-Distributed-Design-Book-2021.pdf> [accessed 25 October 2023], p. 16.
3
Bastian Lange and Hans-Joachim Bürkner, “Open Workshops as Sites of Innovative Socio-Economic Practices: Approaching Urban Post-Growth by Assemblage Theory”, Local Environment, 23.7 (2018), pp. 680-96 <https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1418305>

Ecological Education: Learning in Community

1991-present

Schumacher College: Dartington, near Totnes, Devon, UK

New forms of educational institutions that break from modern disciplinary “education for industry”, developing trans-disciplinary and immersive forms of learning in community

Context

It is not only the things we learn but the ways in which we learn—the environments, relationships, and boundaries inside and through which we learn—that establish our worldview, and direct the ways in which we inhabit the world. Critical Pedagogy, a discipline often traced back to the work of Brazilian socialist and educator Paolo Freire, links questions of pedagogical practice to issues of social justice. Most modern industrialised societies, Freire argued, practice education as a unidirectional form of “training” designed to reproduce the status quo.¹ Separating forms of knowledge into disciplines, and separating humans from nature, eliminates the possibility of holistic thinking, and perpetuates a system whereby nature is exploited and people are separated by hierarchies. Freire proposed an alternative model of learning that is self-led, interdisciplinary, and anti-hierarchical. This model advocates for “education as the practice of freedom”,² and with its liberatory appeal, invites a way of learning and living that takes greater care of the climate.

Practice

Across the world, a number of experimental colleges have adopted Critical Pedagogy in their provision of ecology and design courses, aiming to provide education for an age of environmentalism, not industry, and within a context of ecological breakdown.³ One of the longest-running of these is Schumacher College in Devon, founded by the environmental activist and pacifist Satish Kumar in 1991.

Schumacher College offers programmes on various aspects of agroecology, philosophy, and economics that follow a principle of educating head, hand, and heart together: learning by doing, as well as by living together in Schumacher’s community.

Responding to the frequent criticism that his style is somehow irrational, oddball, or overly-spiritualist, Kumar responds:

“Is my approach unrealistic? Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me ‘unrealistic’ to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed, and wholly exaggerated concept.”⁴

Schumacher College’s postgraduate programme in Ecological Design Thinking encourages students to evaluate their own design practice through an ethos of whole-systems thinking, and approach design as a holistic and trans-disciplinary practice. This course speaks to the challenge of facing climate breakdown by addressing issues through their social, economic, human, and environmental relationships.

Working with some of the same principles, Black Mountains College, in South Wales, offers a single undergraduate programme in Sustainable Futures: Arts, Ecology and Systems Change.⁵ Established by a Welsh human rights researcher and a poet, both from the Black Mountains region of South Wales, the College provides environmentally-situated education in an immersive, sensory way. Its undergraduate programme revolves around asking what kinds of transformation are needed to build an ecologically sound and socially just future, and looks at ways of understanding the past, examining current practices, and experimenting with new futures, across disciplines. The College also offers free vocational courses, fully-funded by the Welsh government, which are designed to foster ecological care and stewardship.

The Schumacher and Black Mountains College examples demonstrate the viability and fruitfulness of shaping education around ecological and social principles of care. Numerous other examples, from the Centre for Alternative Technology (also in Wales) to the Indigenous University of the Territory in southwestern Colombia, could also be mentioned. In these centres for learning, as students are encouraged to rethink the world around them and to challenge institutions of power, education realises its full potential for working across disciplinary and methodological boundaries for greater social and ecological good. Such an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to education is paramount in facing climate breakdown’s combined social and ecological challenges.

Notes

1
Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. by Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2001).
2
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994).
3
Dartington Trust, ‘Schumacher College in the words of Satish Kumar’, YouTube, 22 July 2021 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EpnK6UMYEQ> [accessed 3 February 2023].
4
John Vidal, ‘Soul man’, The Guardian, 16 January 2008 <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jan/16/activists> [accessed 3 February 2023].
5
Though its name recalls the Black Mountain College—an art school which became a hive of creative experimentation between 1933 and 1957 in North Carolina, USA—the Black Mountains College takes its name from the group of hills spread across parts of Powys and Monmouthshire in southeast Wales, where the College is located.

Band-aiding by disciplining

As long as band-aiding remains confined to disciplinary silos, then wider structural issues driving climate breakdown continue unchallenged. When a technocratic breakthrough fixes a discrete problem, it often displaces the issue to another context. For example, geo-engineering and automation are designed to solve narrowly defined problems but ignore relational and long-term considerations such as habitat conservation and labour rights. Band-aiding also risks perpetuating global inequities whereby the Global North “fixes” problems it caused elsewhere. Climate breakdown resists such fragmented ‘solutions’, instead calling for a relational approach which acknowledges cause and effect.

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.

Separating Humans from Νature

The separation of human beings from nature has lethal consequences, not least in the biodiversity loss and species collapse associated with climate breakdown. Nature is treated as inert, losing its vibrant ecological relationality. Abstracting nature as a resource for controlling and extracting profit reduces its life-giving capacities. Mono-culture practices of industrial agriculture exemplify such a technique, with soil exhaustion, crop failure, famine, and chemical poisoning and pollution evidencing the catastrophic effects of mistreating nature as a commodity store and refuse heap. Any climate-oriented action must start with a reconnection of humans to nature.

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 a 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.

Work

Climate breakdown is bound to the over-intensive extraction of the earth’s resources, the associated carbon-intensive processing of materials, mass consumption, and accompanying waste. Such intensity often relies on the exploitation of labour and labourers. In this light, architecture is conceived in isolation from its forms of production and reproduction, ignoring the various exploitations of labour and extractions of resources, which enable its creation. Labour is not an abstract form but a human condition. Addressing labour injustices, therefore, also acknowledges important planetary boundaries. Rethinking hierarchies, building alliances of solidarity, recognising and introducing ethical labour practices undermines larger forces and is an important step in reimagining the relationship of architecture and climate. More equitable systems of labour, from the architectural office through the outsourced contractors such as renderers to the construction site open up a different sensibility to the way that architecture is conceived, seeing it as a relational discipline which places the ethics of planetary care at its core.

Architecture is Climate

Sarah Bovelett

Anthony Powis

Tatjana Schneider

Christina Serifi

Jeremy Till

Becca Voelcker

Connect multiple forms of knowledge – to cut across disciplines, scales, and geographies