Sensing the Environment: Evidence, Narrative, Appearance, symposium, RISD, March 7, 2023.
Parallel exhibition, RISD Architecture, BEB Gallery, March 6—10, 2023.
Funded by the RISD SEI Programming Fund AY22-23.
Parallel exhibition, RISD Architecture, BEB Gallery, March 6—10, 2023.
Funded by the RISD SEI Programming Fund AY22-23.
Climate change is an art of sensing and imaging, just as much as it is a science of analysis. Under what circumstances do we “see,” “know,” and “evidence” the environment? What are the aesthetics and politics of environmental media — those unevenly distributed transformations in our physical and built world?
While maps, drawings, sensing devices, and data collection have long served colonial and extractive interests, the arts of sensing the environment has also been leveraged otherwise. Departing from Eurocentric, Enlightenment-era perspectives of scientific authority and engineered solutions, the arts brings forth counter- practices, mobilizes memories and actions, and dismantles traditional aesthetics of “nature” in the face of the climate emergency. The question is what new images, indexes, documents, and instruments do we need, and how might we design them?
This multidisciplinary symposium builds on existing momentum and discourses at RISD around sustainability and just climate futures — this time, focusing on its critical possibilities. It expands the visual project of rendering climate visible, diversifies voices and actors, and challenges power differentials latent in representations of the environment.
This hybrid online event and parallel in-person exhibition aim to decenter visual mediums of quantification and extraction; to mobilize a collective aesthetics and politics of “the environment”; and to catalyze discussions on how climate agency might be exercised through visual research, acts of design, and creative practice.
Speakers & exhibitors:
sTo Len, artist & NYC Department of Sanitation artist in residence
LinYee Yuan, MOLD
Linda Schilling Cuellar, AHORA & UDLAFelipe Shibuya, RISD Nature Lab
Paulo Tavares, University of Brasília
Maggie Tsang, Dept.
Gabriel Cuellar, cadaster
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RISD Nature Lab (exhibition contribution)
While maps, drawings, sensing devices, and data collection have long served colonial and extractive interests, the arts of sensing the environment has also been leveraged otherwise. Departing from Eurocentric, Enlightenment-era perspectives of scientific authority and engineered solutions, the arts brings forth counter- practices, mobilizes memories and actions, and dismantles traditional aesthetics of “nature” in the face of the climate emergency. The question is what new images, indexes, documents, and instruments do we need, and how might we design them?
This multidisciplinary symposium builds on existing momentum and discourses at RISD around sustainability and just climate futures — this time, focusing on its critical possibilities. It expands the visual project of rendering climate visible, diversifies voices and actors, and challenges power differentials latent in representations of the environment.
This hybrid online event and parallel in-person exhibition aim to decenter visual mediums of quantification and extraction; to mobilize a collective aesthetics and politics of “the environment”; and to catalyze discussions on how climate agency might be exercised through visual research, acts of design, and creative practice.
Speakers & exhibitors:
sTo Len, artist & NYC Department of Sanitation artist in residence
LinYee Yuan, MOLD
Linda Schilling Cuellar, AHORA & UDLAFelipe Shibuya, RISD Nature Lab
Paulo Tavares, University of Brasília
Maggie Tsang, Dept.
Gabriel Cuellar, cadaster
+
RISD Nature Lab (exhibition contribution)

















Photos by Zeyuan Ren
FRM_2022-23_OPEN-AIR
Research project
Research project
Open-Air Education, research project, RISD, ongoing
Funded by the RISD 2050 Fund AY22-23.
Funded by the RISD 2050 Fund AY22-23.
[Planning in progress]

“Notes on Estate Salescraft”
High-Rise Colloquium, symposium, Melbourne School of Design and Melbourne Design Week, March 21, 2022 (AEDT).
High-Rise Colloquium, symposium, Melbourne School of Design and Melbourne Design Week, March 21, 2022 (AEDT).
Virtual presentation for the High-Rise Colloquium, as part of the 2022 Melbourne Design Week. Based on research for the 2018 CCCP Colloquium, Columbia GSAPP, this presentation looks at the politics of the real estate image economy through a first-person narrative.
Melbourne’s skyline has undergone a radical metamorphosis; it now bristles with skyscrapers, which an increasing number of Melbournians call home. Where is this experiment in high-density living taking us, though?
In this 12-hour livestreamed colloquium, architectural theorists Hélène Frichot and Helen Runting will be joined by architect Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation; Singapore-based scholar Lilian Chee; Rhode Island-based, Australian architect Amelyn Ng; and guests from around the globe, each of whom will share their own high-rise story. The Colloquium invites audiences to consider the pitfalls, peculiarities, and potentials of this residential typology by joining this broadcast conversation.
This event can be livestreamed via Melbourne School of Design’s YouTube account. If prompted for a password, please enter: 152853.
Melbourne’s skyline has undergone a radical metamorphosis; it now bristles with skyscrapers, which an increasing number of Melbournians call home. Where is this experiment in high-density living taking us, though?
In this 12-hour livestreamed colloquium, architectural theorists Hélène Frichot and Helen Runting will be joined by architect Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation; Singapore-based scholar Lilian Chee; Rhode Island-based, Australian architect Amelyn Ng; and guests from around the globe, each of whom will share their own high-rise story. The Colloquium invites audiences to consider the pitfalls, peculiarities, and potentials of this residential typology by joining this broadcast conversation.
This event can be livestreamed via Melbourne School of Design’s YouTube account. If prompted for a password, please enter: 152853.



“This will kill that: when information entered the model”
Abstract Traces: Archives and agendas of capture and control, symposium, TU Berlin, August 29, 2021
Abstract Traces: Archives and agendas of capture and control, symposium, TU Berlin, August 29, 2021
Virtual presentation and panel discussion with Ayesha Ghosh, Martien de Vletter, and Vladan Joler.
Coordinated by the Taught Research Project: Archives: Fevering, Filing, Caring, at the Deparment for Architecture Theory, TU Berlin.
Coordinated by the Taught Research Project: Archives: Fevering, Filing, Caring, at the Deparment for Architecture Theory, TU Berlin.


Wandering Through a BIM Maze (Nine Plans)
RISD Faculty Exhibition & Forum, RISD Museum, Providence, October 28 - November 21, 2021
RISD Faculty Exhibition & Forum, RISD Museum, Providence, October 28 - November 21, 2021
With Building Information Modeling (BIM) drafting software, wandering through your dimensionally accurate architecture model has never been so easy. Path length and path time are derived from Path of Travel, an analysis function inbuilt into Autodesk Revit, typically used by architects to calculate egress distances in buildings. Instead of taking the most efficient route, however, this exercise deliberately charts inefficient, erratic narratives through nine plan diagrams.

