Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design

Microplot

The Terraforming Project 2021

Collaboration with Eva Lindsay, Alla Semenovskaya and Dhruv

Shah

The project is a call to recalibrate our approach to design by recognizing the microbiome as an additional parameter and overlooked agent of terraforming. The technological mediation of the continuous, interchangeable and entangled relationships between microbiomes, environments and ourselves allows for higher resolutions of perception in the way we compose synthetic landscapes. When germ theory originally framed microbes as pathogens, design was driven by “sterilization” and aimed at the “extermination” of microbial life and the production of highly tempered and sealed environments, propelling a culture of cleanliness. With the potential advancement and accessibility of metagenomic sequencing, we may be at the cusp of refining our understanding of these microbial systems, and reframing our design practices from the reactory to the nuanced, adaptive, and proactive. Manifesting alternative, more precise compositions across various sites and scales of intervention, the project narrates how sequencing could become a potential design tool to inform deliberate terraforming.

For full film, please click here.

RCA ADS2 Live Project 2022 WORLDING: Beyond Racial Capitalism

ADS2 Black Horizons: Worlding within the ruins of racial capitalism

Ugly Duck, Bermondsey, South London

From the 12th - 14th November, 2021 the students of ADS2 took over the Ugly Duck, Bermondsey to curate an immersive multimedia installation, readings and open discussions engaging visitors on the topic of ‘Worlding: Beyond Racial Capitalism’. as part of our Live Project. ADS2 recognises the production of architecture as a social act. The exhibition’s format aims to subvert the traditional process of researching into a live and interactive experiment, featuring work from current and past students of the studio. This year, we are concerned with what emerges from the ruins of racial capitalism, and how we can sustain forms of nonextractive worlding beyond those ruins. We aim to do this by learning from the global south and drawing on black, indigenous and other–than–human epistemologies to develop a new paradigm for architectural production.

Our student contributors are Joseph Singleton, Nico Jeuch, Francesca Beltrame, Andreea Iliescu, Elizabeth Cox, Tiffany Leeling, Sheryl Wan Shei Beh, Ramit Saksena, Vincent Wang. Tian Yang, Zakiyyah Haffejee and Lauren-Lois Duuah.