Geographical Urbanism
Geographical Urbanism
Abstract:
The mandate for clean urbanism has rested on the city’s capacity to divest itself of the environmental cost of rapidly expanding consumer culture, relegating responsibility for the inevitable waste products of urbanization to geographic entities beyond its jurisdiction. Because such spaces are beyond the zones of occupation of urban citizens, their sites, forms and types are muted and locked away into out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
Such constructed abstractions have worked as powerful tools to contain and depoliticize both geography and urbanism. The precise agency of design is to ask of each to speak to the other. Does it matter whether geography and urbanism are thought and drawn together? Does it matter whether geographies are represented and imagined? What is the role of a geographic imagination in urbanism?
Bio:
El Hadi Jazairy an Associate Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Master of Urban Design at the University of Michigan. He is founding partner of the practice DESIGN EARTH with Rania Ghosn. His research investigates aesthetic forms of environmental engagement to visualize how urban systems transform the Earth. The work of DESIGN EARTH is part of the permanent collection the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Matadero Madrid, SFMOMA, Times Museum in Guangzhou, MAAT in Lisbon. Jazairy is recipient of the United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League of New York’s Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Jacques Rougerie Foundation’s First Prize, and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards amongst other honors. Jazairy is co-author of The Planet After Geoengineering (New York: Actar 2021), Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (New York: Actar, 2018) and Geographies of Trash (New York: Actar, 2015). He is founding editor of New Geographies and editor-in-chief of NG 4: Scales of the Earth (Harvard GSD, 2010). Jazairy holds a Doctorate of Design from Harvard University, a Master of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from La Cambre in Brussels.
Public Lecture by El Hadi Jazairy, DESIGN EARTH
The mandate for clean urbanism has rested on the city’s capacity to divest itself of the environmental cost of rapidly expanding consumer culture, relegating responsibility for the inevitable waste products of urbanization to geographic entities beyond its jurisdiction. Because such spaces are beyond the zones of occupation of urban citizens, their sites, forms and types are muted and locked away into out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
Such constructed abstractions have worked as powerful tools to contain and depoliticize both geography and urbanism. The precise agency of design is to ask of each to speak to the other. Does it matter whether geography and urbanism are thought and drawn together? Does it matter whether geographies are represented and imagined? What is the role of a geographic imagination in urbanism?
El Hadi Jazairy an Associate Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Master of Urban Design at the University of Michigan. He is founding partner of the practice DESIGN EARTH with Rania Ghosn. His research investigates aesthetic forms of environmental engagement to visualize how urban systems transform the Earth. The work of DESIGN EARTH is part of the permanent collection the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Matadero Madrid, SFMOMA, Times Museum in Guangzhou, MAAT in Lisbon. Jazairy is recipient of the United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League of New York’s Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Jacques Rougerie Foundation’s First Prize, and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards amongst other honors. Jazairy is co-author of The Planet After Geoengineering (New York: Actar 2021), Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (New York: Actar, 2018) and Geographies of Trash (New York: Actar, 2015). He is founding editor of New Geographies and editor-in-chief of NG 4: Scales of the Earth (Harvard GSD, 2010). Jazairy holds a Doctorate of Design from Harvard University, a Master of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from La Cambre in Brussels.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Institute of Architecture and the City (IA)
Contact
- jeffrey.huang@epfl.ch