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Architecture after Architecture

Close up image of particles in a lab
Close up image of particles in a lab
Shem Johnson / CSM Grow Lab

Spatial Practice in the Face of the Climate Emergency

Project duration: April 2021 - October 2023
Funded by: AHRC (UK) / DFG (Germany)

Project summary

What happens to architecture after the climate emergency undoes its foundational assumptions of growth, extraction, and progress?

Living with the climate emergency demands systemic change across economic, behavioural, and social structures, with profound implications for approaches to the built environment and spatial production. Architecture after Architecture examines how spatial practices might respond to such challenges, going beyond technical fixes, by addressing the cultural and socioeconomic factors that influence how we make, occupy, and share space.

Project team

Architecture after Architecture is led by a UK-German team of architects and academics based at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London) and the Technische Universität Braunschweig, collaborating internationally with economists, sociologists, designers, artists, writers, and journalists. It is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Project aims and approach

Architecture after Architecture engages in speculative and imaginative forms of thinking to develop critical distance from anthropocentric and extractivist understandings of land use, and linear models of time based on ideals of progress and economic growth. The project's aim is to develop scenarios for future practice that respond to the climate emergency, in fields of architecture, planning, geography, and policy. It will use innovative research methods including scenario-building workshops with multi-disciplinary groups, as well as compiling an open-access international database of practitioners responding to challenges posed by the climate emergency.