Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures – Details, episodes & analysis

If urbanisation is ineluctably spreading across the planet, exactly whose model informs the pattern? Whose plans inform the development of underdevelopment, and spatial imaginary of the mega city? Architect and artist Dele Adeyemo uses film to explore and interrogate issues of racial capitalism and the contemporary lifeworlds that exist in their midst.

Dele Adeyemo's work was commissioned by the Against Catastrophe project. The commission will feature in the second of three installments of the online exhibition Reclaiming Futures. Reclaiming Futures critically examines how design, architecture, and technology are imbricated in producing catastrophic eco-social realities but also present tools with which to imagine and build more equitable, democratic, and sustainable worlds. The second exhibition installment will focus on planetary urbanisms and will be available at https://againstcatastrophe.net in January 2025. The Against Catastrophe project is part of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research initiative supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.  Partners: Humboldt Universität Berlin zu Berlin, Technische Universität Dresden, Universität Basel, Concordia University, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW).

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Almost universally, conversations around imminent environmental, political and social urgencies tend to focus on urban agglomerations rather than on rural communities. Lesego Bantsheng and Awande Bulthezi present the concept of cosmotechnical intelligence, bridging indigenous, traditional and contemporary understandings of materiality and value. 

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Depending on the market economy to deliver decarbonisation seems like a long and potentially futile game. Rather, asks environmental philosopher David Frank, what are the utopian and ecosocialist imaginaries and alternatives that we can draw upon in the real world? 

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

What is the relationship between design and democracy — and has it gone too far? The panacea of participation is widely prescribed, yet as researcher and political scholar Anke Gruendel suggests, questions remain around forms of knowledge and perspectives that are extracted or excluded.

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The irrepressible rise of AI sees us enter a feedback loop between artificial and human cognition, as discussed here by author and scholar of digital cultures Orit Halpern. What does this mean for the automation of environmental intelligence? If AI is the answer, what’s the question?

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Postwar debates heralded the ingenuity of design, even as practitioners like Buckminster Fuller projected the “whole earth” as a testing ground. Examining these techno-scientific, universalist ambitions, designer and cultural scientist Claudia Mareis questions the modernist and imperialist agendas — separating industry from craft — embedded therein.

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Design is often called upon to solve problems that have their roots in political and ecological crises. Drawing upon his research on the history of Empire, academic and researcher Kenny Cupers reveals the origins of planetary thinking as a design project, always intended to shape the very nature of humanity.

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

What possibilities unfold — political, social, cultural — if we propose design as a planetary endeavour, rather than as a problem solving activity? This driving question around the notion of planetary design, frames a discussion between KoozArch founder Federica Zambeletti with Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Claudia Mareis and Laura Nkula-Wenz, from the research group Governing Through Design.

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This conversation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

It often feels as though there are more frequent climate emergencies and environmental disasters than we can properly acknowledge, with consequences still to unfold. While some parties choose to profit from disaster capitalism, Özgün Eylül Işcen, Nadia Christidi and Sudipto Basu discuss their stance against catastrophic thinking.

This episode expands on the Against Catastrophe project and is part of the Planetary Design. Reclaiming Futures audio series, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.  Partners: Humboldt Universität Berlin zu Berlin, Technische Universität Dresden, Universität Basel, Concordia University, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW).

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.