The Art world is not a success. It is not progressive, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous, it is not unbiased – and it frequently misses opportunities to perform better. The art world is a world we dislike, and, in the long term, despise. A machine of accelerated aesthetics, burnouts, precarious living, 24/7 availability and galvanised gossip that is motivated by survival, rather than a common good. I am partial to the thought that the art world has succumbed to something not entirely human, some- thing which in some circles is referred to as Capitalism. ...

Space is a technology. Buildings and the cities they inhabit have become infrastructural – mobile, monetized networks. For the world’s power players, infrastructure space is a secret weapon, and the rest of us are only just beginning to realize. If Victor Hugo came back to give a TED talk, he might assert that architecture, which he once claimed had been killed by the book, is reincarnate as something more powerful still – as information itself. If this space is a secret weapon, says Keller Easterling, it is a secret best kept from those trained to make space – architects. Meanwhile, ...

In 2016 the Aerocene Foundation was invited to Exhibition Road for an interdisciplinary artistic project co-produced by members of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group: a partnership of the leading cultural and educational institutions in London, among them Serpentine Galleries, Imperial College London and The Natural History Museum. Between October and December 2016, the Aerocene Foundation activated a collaborative research platform between Exhibition Road members and wider communities by organizing two hackathons and the ‘Aerocene Campus’ in which participants engaged in debates on metabolic, social and environmental dimensions of the Aerocene epoch. During this period, experts as well as developers, designers, artists, ...

In September, unusual flying objects rose above the Olympiaberg, creating astonishment. The Aerocene Festival unfolded impressively within the air above Munich and with it the artistic vision of limitless, pollution-free aerial mobility. From 6-11th September 2019, it was possible to experience the floating sculptures, test the technology in Pilot Courses or predict and undertake virtual flights. Aerocene was initiated in 2015 by the Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, who works at the interface of art, architecture, technology and science. In the meantime, it has become an international community that seeks to achieve a transformed ecological awareness through artistic action. Aerocene stands for the ...

If you want to change the world, you need to start with great ideas. This volume focus in particular is on the cutting-edge thinking and wider theoretical questions and themes that underpin the series, from reflections upon what our ideas of “future” really mean to the changing role of the architecture profession as a whole. Comprising speculative visions, essays and texts, this volume serves as a theoretical backdrop for the practical approaches seen in Volume 3: The Site. This volume comprises speculative visions, essays and texts from contributors including: Ana Jeinić, Miloš Kosec, Clément Blanchet, Amateur Cities, Liam Young, Something Fantastic, ...

This volume is a call to practical action leading on from the theoretical approaches seen in Volume 2: The Studio. It presents a further selection from the Future Architecture platform call for ideas, and focuses firmly on the nitty-gritty of practice with projects and strategies that are on-site or site ready to shake up that future. These are the inspirational solutions and ideas, which could soon be transforming the landscape of architecture and our cities, reasserting the agency of what architecture in its widest sense can offer and mean. Contributors include: Aleksandra Zarek; Andrej Strehovec; Plan Común; Esen Gökçe Özdamar and ...

How can you navigate towards something when there are no fixed points when you cannot determine your position? How do you know where to go, or even know when you have got there? This fourth volume in the Archifutures series investigates how architecture, traditionally considered to be a future?oriented activity, can best respond as we find ourselves on the threshold of a “post-futurist” condition where the future is not necessarily ahead of us, but everywhere and – perhaps most especially – “now”. Contributors include: Nora Akawi, Florian Bengert, Filipe Estrela, Mariabruna Fabrizi, Nikita Gyawali, Ana Jeini, Holly Lewis, Fosco Lucarelli, Brett ...

We live in challenging times. There is overwhelming evidence that massive change is required in order to survive impending environmental collapse. Yet this fifth volume in the Archifutures series takes the position that the “apocalypse” is not an imminent event, but an insidious process that is already happening. Communities everywhere are facing it on a day-to-day basis. Many are already resisting and adapting. Despite the implied drama of the word “apocalypse”, the reality is actually far more mundane: surviving it is not about building bunkers, it is about building resilience – everywhere and in all kinds of ways. Contributors include: Bora ...

Now is not a time for metaphorical sticking plasters or vanity projects, it is a time for change and a time for action. The mandate of architects and urbanists today goes way beyond designing buildings, it includes changing behavior, influencing and impacting policy, and building bottom-up agency with new understandings of value, justice, and cultural production. This task is best achieved by sharing not just strategies but also practice – completely openly and freely. This sixth volume in the Archifutures series for the Future Architecture platform, therefore, focuses on emerging narratives and strategies that can help architects adapt their practice towards ...

“Instruments of Service” is a class of legally protected work products defined in the American Institute of Architects’ “A201-2007 General Conditions” as “representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect.” In practice, instruments are any drawing, model, calculation or specification created for a client, copyrighted by the architect as a design “recommendation” and trafficked between intellectual, digital and real property. As research, everyday and experimental instruments are assemblages of tools and materials, allography and autography that move from Skype to ‘the street’ through theaters of peer ...

“Conflicts of interest” are said to compromise the impartiality of research, but what would it mean to be disinterested? Ethical codes warn us that researchers’ objectivity can be corrupted by a clashing set of interests—those of funding agencies, clients and publics, as well as researchers’ self-interest in professional advancement or personal gain. If the resolution of such conflicts might typically call for avoidance, recusal or disclosure, what would such strategies mean for the design disciplines and research on the built environment? What varied interests, expressed in the form of money or other manifestations of influence, do designers contend with? Who ...

Today, many of us can remember the disappeared indigenous cosmologies as parts of ourselves, lost to colonialism, industrialization, communist revolutions, and capitalist wars. Many names have been given to ideological or historical grand narratives to soothe the pain of loss, to register those losses and render them searchable, but these memorializing mechanisms still fail to register the pain of losing something much larger that cannot be named—a deep relation to the world, to the cosmos, and to ourselves that gives us strength and sovereignty without need for any other earthly power of right or dominion. What if another kind of ...