Architectural Design Workshop — Architectural Politics for the Cosmos

(pre-approved for MArch Urbanism elective Fall 2023)

he last decades have seen the relentless acceleration of planetary-scale environmental and social challenges. Phenomena as widespread urbanization, human-induced climate change, or the operationalization of natural landscapes interrogate both the agency and the limits of architectural practices. The goal of this workshop is to explore how our architectural responses to the local impact of those planetary phenomena can trigger new forms of spatial and political organization — a possibility we will refer to as cosmopolitical design. 

We will study the idea of cosmopolitical design by investigating the relations between seven main areas of action: 1) Geovisualization, geoknowledge and geoimagination; 2) Architecture After Planetary Urbanization; 3)Territorial Design Across Scales; 4)Ecology as Planetary Praxis; 5)Climate Cosmotechnics; 6)Autonomy and Cosmopolitics; and 7)Decolonization and Cosmopolitics. Together, these seven areas aim to situate the local interventions that constitute the core of architectural practice as catalysts of broader processes of spatial and political structuring.  

The workshop is conceived as a collective design-research exercise, combining lectures, discussions and workshop sessions. In the lectures we will see how each of the seven aforementioned topics acted as a trigger of planetary-oriented architectural practices during modernity, and we will start reflecting upon and questioning the resulting modes of spatial production. Our discussions will build upon the lectures and upon a highly plural body of literature including thinkers from across the planet. We will read texts exploring the ideas of critical cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitics, cosmotechnics, pluriversality, world-ecology and decolonization.  

At the beginning of the course, each student will select a topic of design-research, conducing to the final production of a small individual book. Our emphasis will be on the production of strong and consistent visual narratives. Together, we will explore the synergies and convergences between your research topics, and conclude the term gathering the exercises in a collective volume.