Book Launch: "On Architecture and Greenwashing" / RIOT

As an industry that relies on extracted materials and an intense use of resources, isn’t construction unsustainable by design? The pressure is increasing for the sector to diligently address the harm caused by the built environment, begging the question of whether real sustainability in architecture and planning is possible. As institutionalized and commodified greenwashing hollows out the term, how do architects and designers position their work beyond the inadequacy of a flattening universalistic understanding of sustainability? What forms of practice allow for accountable and revolutionized construction modes? How can we critically engage with technology as an ambivalent tool in the service of green capitalism?

The first volume of a forthcoming series by RIOT, On Architecture and Greenwashing presents a cross-section of positions on architecture and its political economies and explores ways to correct course in the face of a climate crisis of unprecedented magnitude—beyond greenwashing.

RIOT—Research and Innovation On Territory—is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), lead by architect and urban designer CHARLOTTE MALTERRE-BARTHES. 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.

Texts by: Meriem Chabani, Marc Angélil, Cary Siress, Jennifer Newsom, Tom Carruthers, Architecture Climate Action Network
Year of publication: 2024

Editor: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Managing Editor: Kathlyn Kao
Project Management: Dorothee Hahn
Graphic Design: Fernanda Tellez Velasco
Copyediting: Irene Schaudies
Production: Alise Ausmane
Publisher: Hatje Cantz