Book Launch: "On Architecture and the Greenfield" / RIOT
Event details
| Date | 03.12.2024 |
| Hour | 18:30 › 20:00 |
| Speaker | Merve Bedir, Dorothee Hahn, Summer Islam, Kathlyn Kao & Charlotte Malterre-Barthes |
| Location |
Foyer SG
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Architecture and the Greenfield
On the Political Economy of Space
“Architecture and the Greenfield” is the second volume after “Architecture and Greenwashing” (2023) in a series edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL. The collection of essays presents a cross-section of positions on architecture and its political economies from different perspectives. In this volume, Ana Maria Leon and Andrew Herscher, Paulo Tavares, Milica Topalovic and Swarnabh Ghosh articulate stances forming broad theoretical frameworks around urbanization and agriculture—the so-called ‘greenfield.’
Affordable forms of residential urbanization raise a paradoxical question: On the one hand, cheap housing settlements across the world devour thousands of hectares of arable fields at the periphery of growing cities. On the other hand, housing is a human need (and right). This publication investigates the spatial characteristics of housing development on agrarian land and the mode of production at work in transforming fertile, cultivated plots into urbanized settlements. Often discussed and even more so recently in architecture and planning (i.e., “Countryside, The Future,” Guggenheim Museum, OMA, 2020; “Taking the Country's Side: Agriculture and Architecture,” Sebastien Marot, 2019), the urbanization of agrarian land is but a complex matter transversally studied (i.e. political science, urban, rural and development studies, agrarian studies, soil and crop science, or ecology and environmental sciences). From Neil Brenner’s planetary urbanization to Donna Haraway and Anne Tsing’s Plantationocene, scholars have articulated the contradictions of our age, the exploitative weight of agriculture—both historical and contemporary—and the political problems of our growing human footprint- both for residential use and food production.2 The ambition is to candidly investigate beyond the obvious. For instance, while agrarian practices may be understood as a necessary human activity endangered by urbanization, agriculture and food production also inherently carry on an imposing project, aiming to subdue and control space, capital, resources, and populations (i.e., the deforestation of the Amazon for cattle pasture as a colonial alibi). Similarly, agriculture-driven development belongs to ideologies of ‘civilizing’ and to many contemporary settler projects (i.e., the Occupied Territories) that necessitate an examination of both the complex combination of forces fostering it and their physical expressions. Dwelling into these perspectives, contributions by Ana María León& Andrew Herscher, Swarnabh Ghosh, Paulo Tavares, and Milica Topalovic help make sense of these questions. What mechanisms of oppression are revealed by both agriculture practices and urbanization? As we face the climate emergency, is it sustainable to keep chipping at our foodsheds, and what are the alternatives? Which legal instruments and narratives are behind political economies of land tenure? How much does global urbanization threatens food sustenance? From colonial tenure laws to land reforms and agriculture policies, from forest to fields to massive real-estate developments, what does the study of the global urbanization of agrarian land, and the architecture and urban form it generates teach us about the re-organization of territory and complex issues of regimes of land ownership, land use policies, and property laws? This volume speaks to how the accumulation and transfer of land as capital materialises in the competition for land between housing and cultivation, with architecture central to this phenomenon.
Texts by: Swarnabh Ghosh, Ana María León, Andrew Herscher, Paulo Tavares, Milica Topalović
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
On the Political Economy of Space
“Architecture and the Greenfield” is the second volume after “Architecture and Greenwashing” (2023) in a series edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL. The collection of essays presents a cross-section of positions on architecture and its political economies from different perspectives. In this volume, Ana Maria Leon and Andrew Herscher, Paulo Tavares, Milica Topalovic and Swarnabh Ghosh articulate stances forming broad theoretical frameworks around urbanization and agriculture—the so-called ‘greenfield.’
Affordable forms of residential urbanization raise a paradoxical question: On the one hand, cheap housing settlements across the world devour thousands of hectares of arable fields at the periphery of growing cities. On the other hand, housing is a human need (and right). This publication investigates the spatial characteristics of housing development on agrarian land and the mode of production at work in transforming fertile, cultivated plots into urbanized settlements. Often discussed and even more so recently in architecture and planning (i.e., “Countryside, The Future,” Guggenheim Museum, OMA, 2020; “Taking the Country's Side: Agriculture and Architecture,” Sebastien Marot, 2019), the urbanization of agrarian land is but a complex matter transversally studied (i.e. political science, urban, rural and development studies, agrarian studies, soil and crop science, or ecology and environmental sciences). From Neil Brenner’s planetary urbanization to Donna Haraway and Anne Tsing’s Plantationocene, scholars have articulated the contradictions of our age, the exploitative weight of agriculture—both historical and contemporary—and the political problems of our growing human footprint- both for residential use and food production.2 The ambition is to candidly investigate beyond the obvious. For instance, while agrarian practices may be understood as a necessary human activity endangered by urbanization, agriculture and food production also inherently carry on an imposing project, aiming to subdue and control space, capital, resources, and populations (i.e., the deforestation of the Amazon for cattle pasture as a colonial alibi). Similarly, agriculture-driven development belongs to ideologies of ‘civilizing’ and to many contemporary settler projects (i.e., the Occupied Territories) that necessitate an examination of both the complex combination of forces fostering it and their physical expressions. Dwelling into these perspectives, contributions by Ana María León& Andrew Herscher, Swarnabh Ghosh, Paulo Tavares, and Milica Topalovic help make sense of these questions. What mechanisms of oppression are revealed by both agriculture practices and urbanization? As we face the climate emergency, is it sustainable to keep chipping at our foodsheds, and what are the alternatives? Which legal instruments and narratives are behind political economies of land tenure? How much does global urbanization threatens food sustenance? From colonial tenure laws to land reforms and agriculture policies, from forest to fields to massive real-estate developments, what does the study of the global urbanization of agrarian land, and the architecture and urban form it generates teach us about the re-organization of territory and complex issues of regimes of land ownership, land use policies, and property laws? This volume speaks to how the accumulation and transfer of land as capital materialises in the competition for land between housing and cultivation, with architecture central to this phenomenon.
Texts by: Swarnabh Ghosh, Ana María León, Andrew Herscher, Paulo Tavares, Milica Topalović
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
Links
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- RIOT
Contact
- Kathlyn Kao, [email protected]