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Strelka Institute announces a new design-research initiative The Terraforming 2022

Russia Architecture News - Oct 21, 2021 - 12:06   1754 views

Strelka Institute announces a new design-research initiative The Terraforming 2022

The Strelka Institute has announced a new design-research initiative, called The Terraforming 2022. The program is accepting applications until November 7, 2021 to join the 5-month tuition-free design research program at Strelka.

The Terraforming is a three-year (2020–2022) design-research initiative organized by the Strelka Institute and directed by Benjamin H. Bratton and Nicolay Boyadjiev. 

The program runs as an interdisciplinary design think-tank and will host contributions from multiple faculty and experts including Lydia Kallipoliti, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Tobias Rees, Valerie Olson, Christina Agapakis, Ken Goldberg, Venkatesh Rao, Fred Scharmen, David Delgado and many others. 

The third and final cycle of The Terraforming program invites a group of 30 interdisciplinary researchers to join the initiative for 5 months from February - June 2022.*

The Terraforming is seeking viable solutions for future

The premise of the design research program is that a viable future depends on comprehensive terraforming, not of Mars to make it suitable for Earth-like life, but of Earth itself  ecologically, geopolitically, geotechnologically. 

The research of the first two years has reoriented foundational debates on how to conceive and model that viability, based on speculative analyses of synthetic intelligence, automation and ecology, food systems, space law, new modes of governance, the evolution of cities and much more.

The final year returns to the question of the built environment at multiple scales, from the epidermal to the continental. Artificial environments are designed spaces for diverse functions and ways of being and knowing: the city, the laboratory, the factory, the home, the space station, virtual and mixed reality, the body itself, etc. All speak to the planetary as both the condition that makes specific enclosed worlds possible and also as a collective compositional project. 

In 2022 The Terraforming is adding a new chapter of motivating research themes - Artificial Environments, Astropolitics, Synthetic/Spatial Materialism, Planetary Sapience.

The Terraforming is tuition-free program

The program is tuition-free program and researchers will receive a monthly stipend, as the Strelka Institute said. 

The program invites architects, urbanists, filmmakers, media theorists, historians, philosophers, science-fiction writers, artists, engineers, economists, political scientists, ecologists, anthropologists and graphic designers to apply and work collaboratively on interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of cinema, text and speculative design-research.

Applications will be accepted till November 7, 2021. 

For more information visit The Terraforming's website or contact the organizers at: [email protected]

* The 2022 program will have a hybrid format. It will begin on February 1, 2022 with an offline field-trip, followed by 2 months of online seminars, and ending with an extensive design-push phase over the period of 3 months which will take place offline in 1 location.

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design is a non-profit educational institution founded in 2009 in Moscow, Russia. The Institute promotes positive changes and creates new ideas and values through its educational activities. 

Benjamin H. Bratton’s work spans philosophy, art, design and computer science. He is Program Director of The Terraforming at the Strelka Institute in Moscow, and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a Professor at The European Graduate School, and a Visiting Professor at SCI_Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture) and NYU Shanghai.

World Architecture Community is official media partner of Strelka Mag. 

Top image courtesy of Strelka Institute. 

> via The Terraforming