Geologic Architecture and its Landscapes of Extraction (R-12917)

Capitalist architecture sits at the top of a massive extraction system, fueled by global supply chains (Wigley, in Grima et al., 2021). This extractive industry is sustained by the legacies of modernity and coloniality, that rely on land disappropriation, exploitation of peoples and pollution of environments. The field of architecture is alienated from these practices which sustain it, and fails to recognize its involvement in the creation of unsustainable environments and societies, defuturing the world (Vazquez, 2017). Through the geological turn (Ivanchikova (2018), I propose architecture as the product of terraforming –collaborating with the environment to create an habitable Earth– by practising a decolonial, or rather demodern, sustainable architecture. Therefore, I advance an investigation that draws from the field of postcolonial ecology, posthuman anthropology, as well as from decolonial and demodern theory. I will examine the landscapes of extraction of architecture, through an artistic research that defines and explores concepts in relation to sites, and alternates moments of theoretical research to artistic practice. The result will be a rhizomatic research that theoretically and artistically maps out the complex interrelations of the capitalist architectural industry, and its social and environmental implications.

Keywords:geologic architecture, landscapes of extraction

Disciplines:Postcolonial studies, Anthropology not elsewhere classified, Sustainable design, Architecture not elsewhere classified, Art studies and sciences not elsewhere classified