Conference: (Re)Imagining Future(s)

Re)Imagining Future(s): Ecology, Emancipation and the Built Environment

The ongoing efforts to rename the current geological age from the Holocene to the Anthropocene presents a double bind for all concerned and working with(in) the Built Environment. On the one hand, this framing of human beings as geological agents effecting processes at a planetary scale reveals a depoliticization of the ecological crisis that we find ourselves in. As mere geological agents, we, it would seem, are part and parcel of a narrative regarding the built environment which is always and already presented as a scenario of utterly impending doom. On the other hand however, it is also this very framing that foregrounds the fundamental interconnectedness of ourselves and the world through building as performance, as politics(s), as subject(s), as relationship(s) and so on.

In this latter sense then, what calls to the “Anthropocene” also present is a scope for the development/articulations of an emancipatory performative politics within which we can ask anew. How do we build not only to underscore social and economic justice but also environmental justice? How do we build in a world where purpose, aim and intention are not the sole purview of human beings? What do non-human imaginaries of the built environment look like? What kind of a (built) environment do we want to live in? indeed, what do we mean by building(s) and the Built Environment as such?

Conceived jointly between the Shiv Nadar University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), this two day curated workshop brings together people ranging from the fields of engineering to the arts to deliberate upon these questions. The aim of this workshop is not only to present participants with a diverse array of such performative emancipatory politics from transnational perspectives but also to act as a “place” that allows for exchanges as well as formulations of conceptual frameworks that necessarily involve abandoning older understandings of not only building, and politics, but also of selfhood and emancipation. 

From the Division at KTH, Marco Armiero, Sabine Höhler and David Nilsson present their work at the conference.