© Amelyn Ng 2024
CRS_FA21-SP22_CLIMATETIME
BUILDING CLIMATE TIME
Thesis Seminar & Project Studio
RISD Architecture
Fall 2021 /
Spring 22
Thesis Seminar & Project Studio
RISD Architecture
Fall 2021 /
Spring 22
Just as infrastructure seems “invisible until it fails,” climate change tends to be imperceptible until it erupts in flashpoints of disaster. The recent swell of floods, droughts, heatwaves, and fires around the world momentarily make this plain. But anthropogenic change and its systemic inequalities are actually long-drawn processes of extraction and accumulation, inscribed into that liminal crust of the earth we call the built environment. What does climate change?
This year-long thesis sequence calls for designers to think beyond the conventional timescales of a building project. The 24/7 climate-controlled interior, the 30-year mortgage, the 100-year floodplain zone, the just-in-time order of Miesian marble... These obsolescing forms of building time may no longer hold in a wetter, warmer future. The criteria for what constitutes architectural work and what makes a building must change — after Virilio, in order to design the ship, one also designs the shipwreck.
This year-long thesis sequence calls for designers to think beyond the conventional timescales of a building project. The 24/7 climate-controlled interior, the 30-year mortgage, the 100-year floodplain zone, the just-in-time order of Miesian marble... These obsolescing forms of building time may no longer hold in a wetter, warmer future. The criteria for what constitutes architectural work and what makes a building must change — after Virilio, in order to design the ship, one also designs the shipwreck.
