Studio One:
World Post Planetary Universal Design

Instructor: Ed Keller & Carla Leitao Date & Time: Sundays April 11, 18, 25, May 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 10:00 to 12:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: The research/design studio: WORLD operates as a probe to take stock of the current situation, consider the disequilibrium of multiple systems in spirals, and compile an index of research/design possibilities. As architects, urbanists, infrastructural designers, systems thinkers, economists, ecologists, we navigate and negotiate with the intertwined webs of human energy expenditure and information flow, and their impacts on civilization and all species on Earth. The challenge is to envision new configurations at the edge of our planetary comfort zone. Architecture’s conception of itself as a discipline has depended for centuries on a model of the artificial in relation to the natural, and the primal human action in the wilderness: to build a hut or make a bonfire? This tension between codecs of preservation or rituals of conflagration also configures the very base of organic and planetary life and the ‘negative entropies’ of design. But our contemporary models of the world might deploy an alternative to the dialectic of ‘conservation of energy or expenditure’: what we can call a next nature or a third nature, within which all disciplines can operate.
In thinking planetary solutions, we cultivate a design approach that embraces dynamic annotation, massive addressability, scripting, and a companion species-ship with data. Being able to see with a new kind of perception aided by data, while still formulating design ideas generated through the intersection between human input, the automatic, and the autonomous. The problem of the Anthropocene is usually framed by the need to implement a concept of geoengineering we often hold in our minds- that the making of planets has to do with an almost totalitarian restoration or implementation of an ideal equilibrium- yet on our planet we face irreversible, future-deep-time lines of past and present activity interlaced with complex models of equilibrium. This research studio will support the discovery and invention of ‘interloped activities’ in the service of a universalist approach to complete system design. We will identify points of intervention and develop models running the gamut from designed buildings to urban interventions, designed biology, governance, and new forms of ultimately designed intelligence for world environments yet to come. This research process reflects on new constructions of and for the surface of our PLANET, from building to city to landscape to ecosystem, reorganizing its architectures and providing new models and structures to navigate flows of energy, information and culture. We keep in mind as well that subsequent semesters will scale out to wider design challenges for Atmospheres and Cosmos. This studio will work closely with the workshop / seminar Programmed Ontologies taught by Ezio Blasetti and Danielle Willems.

IMAGE: Stuart Davis, Murale per Studio B, WNYC, Municipal Broadcasting Company , 1939

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