Architecture of Extraction: Armelle Choplin / RIOT

Event details

Date	17.02.2025
Hour	16:00 › 17:30
Speaker	Armelle Choplin is a geographer and urbanist specialized on African cities. She focuses on the connections between urban development and globalization and works on the flows of cement along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor.
Location	SG Foyer
Category	Conferences - Seminars
Event Language	English

The lecture series “Architecture of Extraction” explores the past and present relationship between architectural form and extractive processes—as seen by scholars and practitioners. What is the connection between a material’s origin and extraction mechanism, the forces that guide, facilitate, and conduct those activities, and the particular form the material takes in architecture? What is the political economy of this specific material, as in, how is value extracted from it, and what role does architecture play in 1that process? What role does technology impart in extractive processes or in seeking solutions against these? Finally, what alternatives to extraction have design practices uncovered and applied, and turn, what are the physical effects of these different processes on various scales, from construction sites and territories? The underlying goal is to candidly discuss the relationship between extraction capitalism and the built environment via spatial outcomes, from architectural outputs to logistical networks.

Armelle Choplin
Monday 17 February 16:00 - 17:30 CET

Armelle Choplin is a geographer and urbanist specialized on African cities. She focuses on the connections between urban development and globalization and works on the flows of cement along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor.

RIOT (Research and Innovation On Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez-Henderson, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathlyn Kao, Nagy Makhlouf, Nathalie Marj, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production—by design.