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Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature—nor because they were unaware of the serious damage(...)
Environment and environmental theory
November 2018
The environment: a history of an idea
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Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature—nor because they were unaware of the serious damage they had done. What people lacked was an idea: a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of which the natural world is made. Without this notion, we didn’t have a way to describe the scale and scope of human impact upon nature. This idea was "the environment." Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans’ capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide impact of people's behavior emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the future. Now we had a vocabulary for talking about how we were changing nature: resource exhaustion and energy, biodiversity, pollution, and—eventually—climate change. With the rise of "the environment," the authors argue, came new expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding the future of our planet.
Environment and environmental theory
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This publication sheds light on the reflections that led to the creation of EXIT, the 360° video installation created for the exhibition spaces of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. Based on an idea by French philosopher and urbanist, Paul Virilio, the 360° video installation EXIT was created in 2008 by the New York-based studio of artists and(...)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Exit: Based on an idea by Paul Virilio
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This publication sheds light on the reflections that led to the creation of EXIT, the 360° video installation created for the exhibition spaces of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. Based on an idea by French philosopher and urbanist, Paul Virilio, the 360° video installation EXIT was created in 2008 by the New York-based studio of artists and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro for the exhibition spaces of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. Composed of a series of animated maps generated by data, this immersive installation investigates human migrations today and their leading causes, including the impact of climate change. Through six scenarios - Population Shifts: Cities; Remittances: Sending Money Home; Political Refugees and Forced Migration; Rising Seas, Sinking Cities; Natural Disasters; and Speechless and Deforestation - it provides the rare opportunity to understand visually the complex relationships between the various economic, political and environmental factors underpinning contemporary human migrations. The work was updated entirely in 2015, reflecting the alarming evolution of the data since it was first presented in 2008. Through various texts, descriptions of the animated maps, and numerous illustrations, this book sheds light on the reflections that led to the creation of EXIT, and proposes to delve deeper into the very notions and questions that it raises and that are more relevant today than ever.
Architecture Monographs
Mining photography
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Photography has always depended on the extraction and exploitation of so-called natural raw materials. Having started out using copper, coal, silver, and paper—the raw materials of analogue image production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—photography now relies, in the age of the smartphone, on rare earths and metals like coltan, cobalt, and europium. The(...)
March 2023
Mining photography
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Photography has always depended on the extraction and exploitation of so-called natural raw materials. Having started out using copper, coal, silver, and paper—the raw materials of analogue image production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—photography now relies, in the age of the smartphone, on rare earths and metals like coltan, cobalt, and europium. The exhibition focuses on the history of key raw materials utilized in photography and establishes a connection between the history of their extraction, their disposal, and climate change. Looking at historical and contemporary works, it tells the story of photography as a history of industrial production and demonstrates that the medium is deeply implicated in human-induced changes to nature. The exhibition shows contemporary works by a range of photographers and artists, including Ignacio Acosta, Lisa Barnard, F Cartier, Susanne Kriemann, Mary Mattingly, Daphné Nan Le Sergent, Lisa Rave, Alison Rossiter, Metabolic Studio’s Optics Division, Robert Smithson, Simon Starling, Anaïs Tondeur, James Welling, Noa Yafe and Tobias Zielony, along with historical works by Eduard Christian Arning, Hermann Biow, Oscar and Theodor Hofmeister, Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt, Hermann Reichling, and others, and historical material from the Agfa Foto-Historama in Leverkusen, the Eastman Kodak Archive in Rochester and the FOMU Photo Museum in Antwerp as well as mineral samples collected by Alexander von Humboldt from the collection of the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.
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The successful conversion and expansion of abandoned buildings and relics from the industrial past have been the mission of Atelier Deshaus from Shanghai since 2001. The question of how formerly closed industrial complexes can be transformed into new, attractive places for the public is the core theme of this exhibition. It focuses on the transformation along the Huangpu(...)
Atelier Deshaus, Shanghai: Common Landscape, Re-Cultivating Industrial Sites
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The successful conversion and expansion of abandoned buildings and relics from the industrial past have been the mission of Atelier Deshaus from Shanghai since 2001. The question of how formerly closed industrial complexes can be transformed into new, attractive places for the public is the core theme of this exhibition. It focuses on the transformation along the Huangpu River in Shanghai, whose seamless accessibility as a public space was heralded by Expo 2010 Better City - Better Life. Aedes is showing seven projects that have used the potential of former industrial sites to bring new functions to the riverbank and to which the residents attach both emotional and cultural significance. Abandoned production sites and relics of inner-city heavy industry, warehouses, and port facilities can be a huge burden on the sustainable development of a city, especially if they are seen as waste to be disposed of. With its projects, Atelier Deshaus shows how the grey energy used in them can be preserved, at least in parts, through conversion and reconstruction, and how new functions can be assigned. In the face of climate change and the generally far too energy-hungry construction industry, it is also an obvious necessity in China to take an unbiased look at existing buildings. Nevertheless, demolition is still often the priority. Atelier Deshaus counters this with a strategy of minimal intervention that sensitively heralds the transformation of the existing buildings without destroying the historical reminders.
Architecture Monographs
Forensic architecture
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In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights(...)
Forensic architecture
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In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, but has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. In "Forensic architecture", Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, provides, for the first time, an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of this practice. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Traversing multiple scales and durations, the case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere.
Architectural Theory
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We are living through a global catastrophe. Buildings affect how we feel, moment by moment, day by day. They have the power to lift us up and make us feel awestruck, playful, safe, and inspired, just as they can make us feel alienated and sad. But many of the places where we live, work, learn, and heal have become monotonous and disposable. We’re surrounded by cheap,(...)
Humanize: A maker's guide to designing our cities
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We are living through a global catastrophe. Buildings affect how we feel, moment by moment, day by day. They have the power to lift us up and make us feel awestruck, playful, safe, and inspired, just as they can make us feel alienated and sad. But many of the places where we live, work, learn, and heal have become monotonous and disposable. We’re surrounded by cheap, boring buildings that make people stressed, sick, and unhappy. In short, much of our world has been crafted in a way that is hostile to human experience. Now, drawing on his experience of the last thirty years in making bold, beautiful objects and buildings, Thomas Heatherwick offers both an informed critique of the inhumanity in most of today’s contemporary building design, and a rousing call for action. Looking through Heatherwick’s eyes, we see familiar landmarks and cityscapes around the world, from London, Paris, Barcelona, Singapore, New York, Vancouver, and beyond, both old and new, famous and obscure, to learn how places can either sap the life out of us—or nourish our senses and our psyche. The time has come, he says, to put emotion back at the heart of the design process, and the reasons to do so could not be more urgent. Design is not superficial: it has an impact upon economics, climate change, our mental and physical wellbeing—even the peace and cohesion of our societies.
Urban Theory
The case for open borders
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Because of restrictive borders, human beings suffer and die. Closed borders force migrants seeking safety and dignity to journey across seas, trudge through deserts, and clamber over barbed wire. In the last five years alone, at least 60,000 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross a border. As we deny, cast out, and crack down, we have stripped borders(...)
The case for open borders
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Because of restrictive borders, human beings suffer and die. Closed borders force migrants seeking safety and dignity to journey across seas, trudge through deserts, and clamber over barbed wire. In the last five years alone, at least 60,000 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross a border. As we deny, cast out, and crack down, we have stripped borders of their creative potential — as lines of contact, catalyst, and blend — turning our thresholds into barricades. Brilliant and provocative, ''The Case for Open Borders'' deflates the mythology of national security through border lockdowns by revisiting their historical origins; it counters the conspiracies of immigration’s economic consequences; it urgently considers the challenges of climate change beyond the boundaries of narrow national identities. This book grounds its argument in the experiences and thinking of those on the frontlines of the crisis, spanning the world to do so. In each chapter, through detailed reporting, journalist and translator John Washington profiles a character impacted by borders. He adds to those portraits provocative analyses of the economics and ethics of bordering, concluding that if we are to seek justice or sustainability we must fight for open borders. In recent years, important thinkers have begun to urge a profoundly different approach to migration, but no book has made the argument as accessible or as compelling. Washington’s case shines with the multitudinous voices of people on the move, a portrait in miniature of what a world with open borders will give to our common future.
Social
Dafydd Jones: Screen time
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Dafydd Jones is recognized as one of the world's leading social photographers, which over the years has given him unique access to an extraordinary range of social events - from exclusive parties, to the races, to fashion shows, film festivals and debutantes balls• His keen eye, and an instinct for the absurd, has allowed him to capture the behaviour of people who are(...)
Dafydd Jones: Screen time
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Dafydd Jones is recognized as one of the world's leading social photographers, which over the years has given him unique access to an extraordinary range of social events - from exclusive parties, to the races, to fashion shows, film festivals and debutantes balls• His keen eye, and an instinct for the absurd, has allowed him to capture the behaviour of people who are either unaware of or indifferent to the camera. ''Screen time'' explores a variety of social situations, from the mundane to the exalted, and features celebrities, actors, models and even the occasional princess - all glued to their phonesAlmost everyone uses a smartphone, and most of us are addicted. In this book, photographer Dafydd Jones shows us just how pervasive our screen addiction has become. In almost every social situation, he shows how the smartphone has killed conversation and changed the way we look at the world. ''In the eighties and nineties,'' says Jones, ''when I photographed young people at parties or balls, I'd find them chatting each other up, or smooching in corners. Now I see them sneaking looks on their iPhones, checking on their Instagram feeds, or whatever it is they're hooked on. They hardly talk to each other, or make eye contact at all. And it's not just a generational thing - it afflicts the oldies too. Who knows what impact it's having in the bedroom. It's probably a race to see what will wipe out humanity first - global climate change or screen-induced sexual indifference.''
Photography monographs
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Over the past hundred years, the global motto has been "more, more, more" in terms of growth - of population, of the built environment, of human and financial capital, and of all manner of worldly goods. This was the reality as the world population boomed during the 1960s and 1970s. But reality is changing in front of our eyes. Growth is already slowing down, and(...)
Smaller cities in a shrinking world: learning to thrive without growth
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Over the past hundred years, the global motto has been "more, more, more" in terms of growth - of population, of the built environment, of human and financial capital, and of all manner of worldly goods. This was the reality as the world population boomed during the 1960s and 1970s. But reality is changing in front of our eyes. Growth is already slowing down, and according to the most sophisticated demographers, the earth's population will begin to decline not hundreds of years from now, but within the lifetimes of many of the people now living on the planet. In ''Smaller cities in a shrinking world'', urban policy expert Alan Mallach seeks to understand how declining population and economic growth, coupled with the other forces that will influence their fates, particularly climate change, will affect the world's cities over the coming decades. What will it mean to have a world full of shrinking cities? Does it mean that they are doomed to decline in more ways than simply population numbers, or can we uncouple population decline from economic decay, abandoned buildings and impoverishment? Mallach has spent much of the last thirty or more years working in, looking at, thinking, and writing about shrinking cities-from Trenton, New Jersey, where he was director of housing and economic development, to other American cities like Detroit, Flint, and St. Louis, and from there to cities in Japan and Central and Eastern Europe. He has woven together his experience, research, and analysis in this fascinating, realistic yet hopeful look at how smaller, shrinking cities can thrive, despite the daunting challenges they face.
Urban Theory
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"Fuel" is an idiosyncratic, speculative dictionary of fuels, real and imagined, historical and futuristic, hopeless and utopian. Drawing on literature, film, and scientific treatises--most produced long before "climate change" was in circulation--"Fuel" argues for a distinction between energy (a system of power) and fuel (a substance, which can be thought of as(...)
Fuel : a speculative dictionary
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"Fuel" is an idiosyncratic, speculative dictionary of fuels, real and imagined, historical and futuristic, hopeless and utopian. Drawing on literature, film, and scientific treatises--most produced long before "climate change" was in circulation--"Fuel" argues for a distinction between energy (a system of power) and fuel (a substance, which can be thought of as "potentiality") as it endeavors to undo the dream that we can simply switch to renewables and all will be golden. From "Air" to "Zyklon B," entries in this unusual "dictionary" include Algae, Clathrates, Dilithium, Fleece, Goats, Theology, Whale Oil, and many, many more. The tone of the entries ranges as widely as the topics: from historical anecdotes (the Ford Fiesta "boozemobile") to eccentric readings of the classics of "energy lit" ( Germinal and Oil! ); from literary observations (a high octane Odyssey ?) to excursions into literary theory. The dictionary draws from an eccentric canon, including works by Jules Verne, George Eliot's Silas Marner , Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl , and the Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion , among others. A message from this ambitious project is that energy can be understood as a heterogeneous set of self-mystifying systems or machines that block access to thought as they fascinate us. Fuels emerge as more primal elements that the audience can grasp at various points along the way to consumption/combustion. This dictionary can help scramble our thinking about fuel--not in order to demonize energy and not in order to create a new hierarchy in which certain renewables take over from fossil fuels but instead to open up potential ways of interacting with real and imaginary substances, by wrenching them out of narrative and placing them into an idiosyncratic dictionary to be applied by readers into new narratives.
Environment and environmental theory