ThoughtGallery.org > Manifesto Series: Closed Worlds

Manifesto Series: Closed Worlds

With Lydia Kallipoliti, Peder Anker, Ross Exo Adams, Andrés Jaque, Bess Krietemeyer, Anthony Vidler, and Mark Wigley

What do space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy.

The history of twentieth-century architecture, design, and engineering has been strongly linked to the conceptualization and production of closed systems. As partial reconstructions of the world in time and in space, closed systems identify and secure the cycling of materials necessary for the sustenance of life. Contemporary discussions about global warming, recycling, and sustainability have emerged as direct conceptual constructs related to the study and analysis of closed systems.

From the space program to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living, The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit? (Lars Müller, 2018) documents a disciplinary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism, wherein the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings. While these ideas derive from a deeply rooted fantasy of architecture producing nature, The Architecture of Closed Worlds displays their integration into the very fabric of reality in our contemporary cities and buildings.

Manifesto Series: Closed Worlds brings together a panel of architects, building technologists, and historians to discuss the complex and divergent legacies of sustainable design practice as a bodily reality, beyond the statistics of resource management. Participants will be asked to present manifestos that convey counter histories and projected futures of closed systems in order to consider the potential impact of designing environments that simultaneously provide enclosure, sustainability, and sustenance. In order to challenge the established sustainability axiom “cradle to cradle,” one may need to look at shit.











When: Thu., Dec. 6, 2018 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Where: Storefront for Art and Architecture
97 Kenmare St.
212-431-5795
Price: Free
Buy tickets/get more info now
See other events in these categories:

With Lydia Kallipoliti, Peder Anker, Ross Exo Adams, Andrés Jaque, Bess Krietemeyer, Anthony Vidler, and Mark Wigley

What do space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy.

The history of twentieth-century architecture, design, and engineering has been strongly linked to the conceptualization and production of closed systems. As partial reconstructions of the world in time and in space, closed systems identify and secure the cycling of materials necessary for the sustenance of life. Contemporary discussions about global warming, recycling, and sustainability have emerged as direct conceptual constructs related to the study and analysis of closed systems.

From the space program to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living, The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit? (Lars Müller, 2018) documents a disciplinary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism, wherein the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings. While these ideas derive from a deeply rooted fantasy of architecture producing nature, The Architecture of Closed Worlds displays their integration into the very fabric of reality in our contemporary cities and buildings.

Manifesto Series: Closed Worlds brings together a panel of architects, building technologists, and historians to discuss the complex and divergent legacies of sustainable design practice as a bodily reality, beyond the statistics of resource management. Participants will be asked to present manifestos that convey counter histories and projected futures of closed systems in order to consider the potential impact of designing environments that simultaneously provide enclosure, sustainability, and sustenance. In order to challenge the established sustainability axiom “cradle to cradle,” one may need to look at shit.

Buy tickets/get more info now