Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Mapping, Sensing and Hacking – Rethinking Architecture in the Era of the Anthropocene

In his book Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking, David Chandler (Chandler, 2018) suggests referring to the Anthropocene debate not only by addressing the problems of climate change and the disruption in the ecological balance but rather as an opportunity to signify the end of the modern condition and to open up a new era of political possibilities. The affirmation of the Anthropocene reflects a shift from liberal or modernist understandings based on assumptions of ‘command and control’ from the top-down towards discursive framings of contingency, complexity, non-linearity and entanglement. He claims that with this affirmative shift, the realization that the Anthropocene cannot be secured, governed or engaged within traditional ways, should emerge. 

This proposed paper will suggest rethinking the role of architecture in the era of the Anthropocene with the new challenges that it poses through the new set of ontopolitical assumptions which are beginning to inform contemporary social and political thought. It will explore how the three principles of “mapping”, “sensing” and “hacking”, discussed by Chandler in the context of governance, can be applied to the architectural domain, and how this can stimulate novel processes for architectural interventions in existing ecological systems. In this context, the paper will address the different potential typologies that each one of these categories presents for architectural practices in regards to of the Anthropocene, replacing the rationality based on linear approach and culture/nature divide of modernism with alternative principles: autopoiesis, causality, non-linearity and immanence- in the case of “mapping”, giving priority to adaptation as the preferred strategy for facing risks and threats posed by the Anthropocene; homeostasis, correlation and effect-in the case of “sensing”, focusing on the acceptance of the Anthropocene condition by responding to threats and problems not by attempting to prevent them but rather by trying to minimize their potential consequences; and sympoiesis, experimentation and becoming- in the case of “hacking”, seeing in the Anthropocene as an opportunity to discover new forms of creative experimentation. This paper will refer to these three concepts, not in their traditional forms but in their new manifestations enabled in relevant cases by new technological and scientific tools, presenting novel possibilities of acting within the world in a proactive manner. These tools make it possible to interface in real-time big data with material substance, ecological systems and people with buildings and structures while merging together elements from different ontological realms. In this context the paper will refer to the concept of the “Terraforming” developed by Benjamin H. Bratton (Bratton, 2019) who claims that “the responses to anthropogenic ecological crisis must be equally anthropogenic” and therefore within the condition of the Anthropocene, the “planetary to come” will be more than ever before artificially constructed and depended on human intervention. 

In order to show the ways in which architecture can activate a new relationship between man and his environment, based on Chandler’s three typologies mentioned above, this paper will analyze architectural proposals offering different approaches to the current ecological condition. A special focus will be given to the relationship between ecological thinking and architecture in the Israeli context, in light of the unique history of the land which has been going through, since the state’s establishment in 1948, a comprehensive process of “re-design”.[1] It has been acknowledged in recent years that this process, which took place on a national scale and was considered at that time as a manifestation of the state’s innovative capabilities, has devastating ecological effects which have impaired Israel’s unique biodiversity and the ecological functioning of the land (Rothschild: 2019). The projects which will be discussed will span from environmental and urban projects to material manipulation in the nano-scale that influence buildings performance, using new scientific and technological tools being used in contemporary architectural practices. 

Adopting new approaches to architecture and to new forms of entanglement within the environment requires assessing the overall “resilience” of the new evolving space. The paper will address the political, sociological and ethical implications of building resilience environments, taking into consideration conflicting processes within different participating agents. Therefore it will refer to the potential effects of the different architectural approaches for the Anthropocene era, through a critical reading of resilience strategies.

[1] Through national planning projects, as a political manifestation, the geographical surface of the country was changed as the barren landscape was transformed to expanses of green through an intensive forestation process. This process was an expression of the westernization of the country which had succeeded in distinguishing itself from the “cultures of the Arab Palestinian landscape”. From an architectural perspective, the original Arab building style, which was suited to local climatic conditions and topography, was replaced by buildings founded on modernist construction typologies with no relation to local traditions. Currently, the political conflict in the West Bank (and the new military and civil buildings by the Israeli side), imposes new kinds of interventions in nature which result in the perforating of the existing ecological sequences.