01.10.2020
Alexandra Arènes – CRITICAL ZONES: SENSORS FOR GHOST LANDSCAPES
Ghost Landscapes refer both to abandoned and ruined lands, but also to territories from which resources are extracted for use in other countries. Recognizing these ghosts is a difficult task because there is no clear definition of their boundaries, scales and composition. At least if we only try to represent them with traditional maps and satellite instruments that give us views from above. To better understand what a landscape is made of and what their trajectories are, we need other sensors: to understand the composition and behavior of landscape entities that we took for granted, such as rivers, soils, trees, which once we follow them with the instrumentation of earth scientists appear in a completely different form. Critical zone sciences are meant to help us understand critical places on earth where life is threatened, where the roles of actors, human and non-human, are unclear, but far from giving clear answers, critical zones leave us in a state of uncertainty. Perhaps this uncertainty is the real challenge of this century for architecture at the time of the Anthropocene. Through her fields trips to sites where scientists are working, and through visual research and an exhibition, she will describe what she found in the critical zone observatories that might render us sensible to the dynamics of the damaged Earth.
Alexandra Arènes is a French landscape architect and now a PhD researcher at the University of Manchester. She co-founded SOC (Société d’Objets Cartographiques) in 2016, a think tank on earth political design, drawing on scientific and public enquiries, and producing workshops and exhibitions. The studio designed the installation CZO space at the ZKM (Museum for Art and Media, Karlsruhe) for the exhibition Critical Zones. Observatories for Earthly Politics (curated by Bruno Latour, 2020), the result of close collaboration between science and art. She has also contributed to theater research (INSIDE, Back to Earth, Où atterrir?), and co-authored the book Terra Forma, Manuel de Cartographies Potentielles (B42, 2019).
The lecture is part of the talk series MY EARTH within the core course Architecture of Territory: Territorial Design in Histories, Theories, and Projects.
CONCEPT AND REALISATION
Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich Department of Architecture
Prof. Milica Topalović
Dr. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes
Metaxia Markaki
Dr. Gyler Mydyti
Dr. Nazlı Tümerdem
VIDEO EDITING
Qianer Zhu
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Goda Budvytyte
BOOK BINDING
Michiel Gieben
This lecture series sets up an agenda for widening the disciplinary field of architecture and urbanism from their focus on the city, or the urban in the narrow sense, to wider territorial scales, which correspond to the increasing scales of contemporary urbanisation. It discusses the concepts of territory and urbanisation, and their implications for the work of architects and urbanists.
MY EARTH
Within the program, five guest speakers are invited to open up perspectives on territory as Earth and the manifold meanings it embodies: Earth as a living world, a world-system, earth as soil, as land, as field, and even as dirt. By looking at the Earth and its ecologies, the guest speakers will propose novel and urgent approaches to territory and urbanisation: from “Gaia-graphy” of Earth’s critical zones, and emergence of urban soil mapping as tool in urban design, to working with “dirt” in order to develop an ethics of care and maintenance for precarious environments.
The course will enable students to critically discuss concepts of territory and urbanisation. It will invite students to revisit the history of architects’ work engaging with the problematic of urbanising territories and territorial organisation. The goal is to motivate and equip students to engage with territory in the present day and age, by setting out our contemporary urban agenda. The lectures are animated by a series of visual and conceptual exercises, usually on A4 sheets of paper. All original student contributions will be collected and bound together, creating a unique book-object. Some of the exercises are graded and count as proof of completion.
Hello good morning everyone thank you uh very much for joining we are delighted to have you with us we can see right now that there are about 166 people in the auditorium and I’m already scrolling through the screen left and right and it would be great if you if you want to
Turn on your cameras at least for a couple of minutes to have a to have a brief contact and say good morning hello hello hello familiar faces I see on my first screen Anna Maria and Miki and Antoine vial and and many other friends uh great to have you with us so today
We are in our session number three of the lecture series architecture of territory territorial design in history theories and projects and we have our first guest of the Season Alexandra aren a landscape architect cartographer designer theorist who is completing her PhD at the University of Manchester she will tell us more about
It in her lecture on the critical zones in a couple of minutes but first before we even introduce Alexandria in her honor and to have a let’s say a warm-up all together preparing for this talk let us begin with two concepts of the morning mitaxia will share the screen and you will
Oops sorry so hello everyone from my side um oh I’m sorry there is something here Um so hello everybody and welcome to our Zoom Auditorium so as every time we start also together with our session exercise so all of you um having a last name starting from a to M uh you can take a blue pen or a blue marker and the term anthropocene so on a
White A4 paper you try to sketch or interpret this word um as you understand it and the rest of you so uh your last name starting from n to Z you hold the red marker a red pen and you take the word yeah [Laughter] we give you uh five minutes so I said
What you have to do is to sketch those terms and uh photograph them and upload them to our WhatsApp group so in five minutes from now we will share the screen to the WhatsApp group and we can comment your terms starting from now of course this can also be a written observations
Associative Concepts sometimes let’s say personal definitions I’m sure you’re all talking about answer the scene but Gaia is perhaps something that comes not so often in a conversation okay my WhatsApp starts pinging now we have Is ready you can start uploading so we can start commenting on your exercises would you like to already yes maybe wait until the time is up mm-hmm I think it’s bad oh I would give still half a minute and then we can start sharing the the WhatsApp to have enough time to comment
Okay great I already see some very interesting endeavors yes me too it’s fascinating okay right yeah let’s share it okay so pencils down as we would say and we start um sorry let me adjust to my screen um the red red ones are Gaia and blue ones are anthropocene
It’s fascinating how similar the drawings sometimes are perfect so I’m just scrolling through and all the panel you take the freedom to comment okay time is over officially and take the freedom to comment stop me and ask students questions I think it looks like a tree oops oh I’m sorry
This is uh unexpected looks like Robert Smithson concrete rundown or something like that I’m not sure I really understand it but oh that’s nice okay the the apple is eaten this is uh maybe guy at the hole okay this is interesting there is a there is a it’s another
A kind of organic metaphor nice here we see a A kind of a Cycles evolutionary Cycles it’s a lot about human scale human footprint uh here is the footprint destruction indeed so I I think we are we are familiar now this is interesting the the blue lines maybe maybe the blue lines were a kind of a
Oh cool okay okay here we have a footprint okay great thank you David a lot about fan no the the he has to think a little bit right while sitting on the planet you should now think yes the atlas has to think again that’s good this is nice the wonderful arthropos anthropos wow
Wonderful very nice we had a lot more uh Javier now Gaia is coming later maybe it was okay we have the feminine now is interesting oh wow I love this wow this is just a wonderful Thomas thank you nice to see this smiley face wash bro
Okay it’s it’s going very very fast and uh I’m sorry here here we see here we really see a goddess that’s nice Mother Nature this is also interesting wonderful you know sometimes when we when we did this in our Auditorium uh and uh sometimes the interpretations are so similar
And you know I would think well you know the kind of ideas travel through the auditorium but this is so interesting because you are you are all sitting in your apartments and and we still have this kind of a let’s see common wonderful so uh uh maybe it’s fantastic
Simpler that was also there are so many wonderful ones I I’m really really uh really grateful to see this and I’m wondering if it’s time to stop sharing maybe we can we can indeed now stop I think it was it was a wonderful um a kind of a still frame movie uh which
Which we created together in a few minutes thank you so much and uh um uh let us let us know move towards the lectures so nasley nasley will introduce Alexandra this morning yes so hello everyone please speaking from Istanbul by the way yes greetings from Istanbul and hello everyone I hope you
Can all hear me today we are really delighted to welcome Alexandra the first among the five guest speakers we have it in our sub series my Earth which I guess you all know by now is the special thematic of this semester lecture series so our aim in choosing this my Earth as
A team was to move to multiple meanings its possesses and find out the manifold ways that it could be represented in and looking at her work having Alexandra as the first gay speaker seems like a very apt choice for us Alexandra is a French landscape architect and a PhD researcher at the
University of Manchester the working title of her PhD is architectural design at the time of anthropocene a geographic approach to the critical zone so two of the concepts you had today just now and her supervisor are Professor Albania Neva and Professor Stephen Walker she also co-founded Associated objects
Cartography in 2016 which is a think tank on Earth political design drawing on scientific and public inquiries and producing workshops and exhibitions there is Studio recently designed the installation space at the tsetka M sent room for constant medium carlsruhe for the exhibition critical zones observatories for Earthly politics
Uh curated by Bruno La Tour which was also one of the texts you had for reading the exhibition was the result of a close collaboration between science and art and now you can find the link to this exhibition in the chat room we are very much looking forward to
Hearing Alexandra talk about her experiences and findings in the critical Zone observatories and see her experimental cartographies or as she refers to them as biographies of the anthropocene in more detail this we believe will give us the critical hints in understanding and representing our complex and uncertain ecologies as Architects and planners
So welcome Alexandra and here we leave the word to you we would like to ask you to switch off your cameras during the lecture of Alexandra Alexandra sir yeah thank you Natalie and thanks to the team to having me today uh it’s a great pleasure to be
Um in this class uh I would well and thank you for your exercise because uh it’s very revealing and it was very interesting to see how you put the anthropocene and Gaia and how you put humans uh in the side of the anthropocene and no humans in the side
Of Gaia so we will try to to disentangle these terms so I always share my screen and I will start so the lecture and when I Was preparing this presentation I didn’t realize at first the Striking resemblance between the representation of the Earth or the geography that I’m going to present to
You and the lockdown situation so indeed you will see that this representation of the earth which we are developing with Scientists philosopher architect artist historians or sociologist so it’s really a work in progress and it suggests that the Earth is closed and that we are in fact confined to the
Film of the critical Zone and the critical zone is really where all living beings including us are living with entire biosphere and we have always resided and I hope to show you that we are never outside even when we are in a landscape because we are always inside this
Critical Zone this part of the earth entirely built by living organism so I use this lockdown metaphor but to make you feel maybe more intensely what is this to be inside the Earth because I also hope to convince you that it has a completely different meaning and that we
Should be happy to be enclosed inside the Earth but my main concern is that we don’t have representations of this condition and that we the aerial maps that we use in landscape design project for example don’t really give us the empress impression but we are only and always
Inside the earth inside this critical Zone from the Ariel point of view everything seems stable under control this is a kind of reassuring or silent pacified view of the space and so the territory seems perfectly controlled with the aerial maps however this is a representation haunted by its ghosts
Indeed Maps carry a thousand ghosts in their hiding faces they kind of simplify the space but how could could it be otherwise because it’s a cartographer has always asked to ask how to prioritize a voice over another one how to synthesize without taking part and how to negotiate the scale and
How to render visible tiny entities Maps we argue are always very important because they allow shareable knowledge on territory and there are also tours accounting for disputed lands such as this middle-aged figures in France which cartograph the disputes on the same territory is a different views
And so in this lecture we will try to understand what is the terrestrial and how to map it how to map a territory full of contradictions because of the anthropocene which disorients ourselves in time and space so the lecture is kind of structured in six parts first we will introduce what
Is the anthropocene then we will follow the scientists in the critical Zone where they try to detect ghost Landscapes and we will try to to Um understand what is viscous landscape then I will propose you without experiments an exploration expression narrative with the soil map then I will say rewards on what is geography and how we can maybe model it with our tools then I will talk shortly quickly about the exhibition as a zkm museum in
Germany and at the end we will propose you a little exercise with the Moodle soil and I will just introduce a book which the model is extracted person what is it so we are often imagine that the soil is firm and stable but from a geological point of view it appears quite differently
Exposed to multiple entropic pressures it moves crumbles slides sinks and collapses spinning from the earth crust to the finest layers of our fertile soils the action of tectonic plates and the water cycle activated by your sun’s energy combined with the activities of living organisms the soil is never left to rest
From local pressures to unalterable death geological history however cover periods of time from which humans seems excluded until recently indeed the geological history of the 21st century is quite different with the evidence gathered by scientists we can never deny nor remain indifference to the fact that humans
Have become a major geological Force but it is not only rapidly transforming the chemical and physical composition of the Earth but also disrupting disrupting ecosystems at such a rate that they do not have time to adapt humans exploit the death disturbs the strata create layers of plastic and
Concrete shape the Earth to the point that the history of the conquest of the Earth’s death could be told in the anthropocene we are facing two disorientations one the world will live in is reacting under our feet and through the world we live from is actually disappearing from real
Indeed humans not only move soils within the same area but they also move soils from one place to another so the sunflower from sea floors the sand from the sea floors is used to build concrete buildings as you certainly know and so a wall here is in fact a whole dug elsewhere
This is what an historian palmras called ghost acreages with this notion he argues that developed countries exploit resources from other countries and thus increasing their land surfaces without depleting the ones inside their legal borders so the ghost are courageous are the acreages but we don’t see to use but we
Don’t live on or in and that that we need for it for our living while causing environmental and social damages somewhere far away for example uh you’re suddenly live at Europe use thousands of colonized lands for plantations for its food so what anat Singh called the anthropocene actually is a plantation
Focusing the attention on land exploitation soil and landscape and arguing that plantations in the early form of capitalism and ghost and slave colonized lands can be felt at different scales Like Richard doors while Urban side citizens leave from ghosts from acreages crucial territories import fertilizers form a form
Ghost as well as ruins are everywhere where we live in and where we live from don’t seem too much so why why are we not seeing the ghosts are creatures maybe because according to Bueno La Tour we don’t have a good representation of the Earth we always consider it as a Blue Marble
Suspended in the infinite full of resources with well-defined stable borders and yet we don’t live there this views is a complex artifact indeed instead we live in the critical Zone the thin layer at the surface of the Earth much more complex than previously thoughts because modified and maintained by habitable living mental habitable
Sorry by living beings from the critical view the planet does have boundaries as shown since 2009 by the Earth ion system so how do we improve our ability to bridge this gap between the territory we live in and the one we live from from where we steal our resources
Later argues that we have to go through a description of our soil and this is actually the work of a group of scientists recording carefully the composition of a portion of a land critical Zone scientists set observatories in Landscapes equipped with many sensors to become sensitive and getting new understanding on major
Environmental issues such as the roads soy depression or pollution the critical observator is a watershed equipped with scientific instruments that give new insight into the complexity of the soil from the Bedrock to the canopy of the trees that rule their nutrients from these rocks as it processes poorly known in terms of
Reactions variation and evolutions the observatories are located at different places on Earth and so this new outdoor laboratory facilities contributes to the construction of a new way at looking at the earth a new globe but much as scattered and so the critical view does not correspond with this Blue Marble of
The Infinite Space as we will see and the critical doesn’t seem to me much muddy chaotic with multiple acting agents in a world it’s much more populated than the view from above as we are going to see the next chapter so the ghost landscape Or the critical Zone detected by scientists
Can be for example the soil that disappears through the process of erosion purchase the soil that leaves one point to be transported to other points Downstream of rivers by dispositing sediments it’s a natural cycle but now soil erodes faster to you due to human constriction and soil and permeabilization
Scientists are able to trace a lot of soil thanks to chemical trestles they follow its movements its trajectory through the Watershed they are able to know how fast the soil is slipping away and the speed can be really frightening in Taiwan for example the soil loss is 10 centimeter per year
Which is eight eighty centimeter centimeter on the scale of a life life time so the soil is a kind of ghost and another one is water and as you know water is an important issue in climate change in the wash Forest observatories Associated the border of France and Germany
I followed the scientists in their daily practices and during the recordings in July we reach a 38 degrees and it added rain for more than a month just know which normally recharges the ground with water at Holy fallen during the winter and so if there is no no
There is no water or charge and when we were in the field in July the water had become really ghostly like a missing Element no drops in the normally filled bags that the scientists are collecting it was as if the scientists were constantly talking about water but we couldn’t see it
In fact to be able to see it they use a really sophisticated machine the gravity meter that you see here which records the mass of the water table at Great depth but because the groundwater signal is so tiny this is the last one in the diagram
Compared to over signal of the scale of the earth so they have to erase the information of the mass of the Earth they must also remove an important Gravity the tidal wave whose effects can be felt under the wash mountains and to pick up the tiny signal from the
Water table which varies only a few centimeters of the other year and which is about 10 to 20 centimeter thick underground I was very surprised to learn how thin it is they they have to erase the nose of the North Sea waves breaking on the shore so it’s a also
Kind of ghost signal or a ghostly echo of the earth that can be felt everywhere foreign Observatory we can feel negatively the ghost acreages that we cause in other parts of the world because the scientist trace a sulfur which causes acid rain and the death of the tree in this Forest
Thanks to the gut health these kind of devices that we see on the left of the screen the screen so scientists collect the rain and analyze it in the lab and they see the amount of sulfur contained in the rain and they discovered that a huge amount amount of
Sulfur comes from Asia sometimes in less than 20 days in good weather conditions so our clubs that may actually be produced in Asia in factories burnt gas and produce sulfur but this sulfur is coming to us faster than the growth we are potentially going to consume
But it compacts in another form but of acid rain so we don’t necessarily understand the connection at first at first glance this connectedness of the Earth and so what is global is not an ID it is what we experience at a local point a phenomenon that may have been generated
At another very distant local points with these three short stories of the field um I have I could have telling a three different kind of ghost landscapes there is three type of ghosts when I was thinking about the critical Zone the ghost has depletion or disappearance due to other use with the soil
The ghosts as hiding part of the critical zone for with the water and finally the ghost has mounted effect something forgotten which is coming back with hunger let’s say with a surfer and the more I think about the interest of critical zones for our territorial studies the
More their IP to me they appear to me as a network of sensors to understand ghost landscapes they reveals the ghost hiding by our naturalistic view of nature the instruments are indeed intensification procedures like the gravimeter to critical as an observatory is an equipped space that allows us to
Understand how each entity is linked to another where it acts where the water goes underground where the atmosphere goes where the soil erodes they bring these ghosts back to life because indeed the anthropocene produces ghosts but the new devices and server of the critical Zone can detect these ghosts so
We can no longer avoid them not here not hearing their voices and maybe at the end of the trip of the journey we may no longer see ghosts we may see living landscapes reflecting on this sensor how could we architect describe a ghost a ghost landscape How We Do It
First of all women need sensors an instrument a tool to be able to describe in a more Vivid or more complex way what a landscape is which is no more taken from granted object like like we saw with the water soil and suffer examples which are I which are sorry highly
Reactive to each other and to other elements and so pixel by pixel the scientists recompose what a landscape eats not in a geographical view but rather in an intensive and perhaps more molecular View now we are doing a little speculative exercise literature kind of fiction speculative
And I need you to cut your shoe yourself in the shoes of someone who have to draw the map of this landscape order to make these alternative visualization what are the steps that you will need to follow so first of all you will need to find the right instruments to obtain the data
You would then have to connect to your Specialists or perhaps build the instrument yourself according to your knowledge then you will have to take the instruments to the field you cannot map it from above just using satellite views because you don’t be able to decipher more complex things
That are happening in the river or in the soil like the scientists cartography has indeed established a distorted relationship with reality landscape entities have been made stable by the forms inscribed on the map which those become reality the only materiality because maybe we have no longer a question and described the
Practice of cartography and the process necessary for its elaboration but these are different tools gestures the relationship to the site and to the multiple encounters that we may encounter during the field so it’s rediscovering the practice of cartography May means getting back on the ground moving from place to place
With a tool that is half new Alpha revamped so when you bring this instrument your model your map to the field you have to collect your data in a certain way and you have to make it transportable that is you have to bring this knowledge back to your Workshop like the scientist laboratory
And so you also have to find the right way of writing down inscriptions that accurately reproduce what you have collected and by doing this step by step you start to create your own captions but in order to be able to share these captions we’ll have to make them knowable shareable
So you will have to explain them to describe them to write them down this is a very important notion narration narrations it never separated from visualization it goes hand to end in over a world that can there cannot be a map without a narrative a textual description questions
I will now suggest you without experiment to demonstrate I hope the power of narrative what if the Earth was an unknown planet and let’s try to equip ourselves for for this exploration we are not going to discover new lands but we could learn to see the territories around us differently
We will need new visualization tools Optical instruments to capture ghost landscapes through its death movements and ruins now I will just uh and with my screen sharing and I will copy past a link in the chats zoom and please open it classic so it’s a it’s a Vimeo link
And please add my signal play start on the video so I will just wait a few moments for everyone to get the link because I’m going to talk over this video because my connection my internet connection is not so good so I prefer that you follow the
Vimeo uh the video on on your own browser so if everyone has getting the link maybe just um waves or no I can see I can see anyone so okay so I will start so please uh play play now sorry so this is the Earth oops
So this is the Earth but not the smooth shiny Blue Marble grasping the globe sideways means no longer being on an isotropic space but grasping this traces pores Marks tattoos scores scratches of its skin to explore the Earth again is to understand how it is terraforming you
Notice that play on walls the shift in meaning that we make to the term terraforming terraforming and generally conceived that as ultra-technical so it’s hypothetical terraforming of Mars which is supposed to transform its atmosphere and climate to make it habitable for humans on the contrary here we Define terraforming as an exclusive literature
Practice shared with other living beings let’s dive into this material shaping the Earth what do we see ghost territories May due to the in ignorance for the soil and its death we don’t know it because we don’t see what is underneath whether it is we inhibit the death or the objects that
We have deliberately buried in the earth strata sometimes so that we can no longer see them far as the ground is a surface on which we work or a surface what we share with the land registry we buy a house a plot of land but this is a fictional boundary
A line on a piece of paper that assigns or denies the power to live in but now we know that the effect of our actions especially our wastes is not limited to the surface but flows into the ground accumulates underneath changes the chemistry of things and organisms sometimes even leading to their description
Thus we suggest directing our gaze our attention towards the soil but also towards the sky at least as far as the canopy the limits where life can develop the boundary of the critical Zone let’s now explore a speculative ground by following the various strata of this map of the soil
In the first meter the circle closest to our epicenter shows matter that is forming with movement and composed of a variety of organic particles turning over this one meter of surface soil we find that is suffused with microficials and weights a few thousand tones in some places however there is nothing
The ground is dead not empty but nothing moves instead pieces of rubber sink deeper continuing downward three meters we follow the tunnels of badgers and the barrels of small mammals that guide us to the surface these passageways I are here and there interrupted by concrete sacrifices thanks it seems connected by a network
Of Pipelines between the tongues water infiltrates and drains that contents to grito death at 10 meters deep we discover the remains of all buildings white and rectangular they compressor soil and mix with rocks in the over hemisphere the rules have already rejected them pushing them to
The surface as if they were no longer welcome in the underground world however most of the time the inhabitant organisms and the hosted objects coexist in the first levels at 50 meters deep we can no longer distinguish the origins of ever because chemistry transforms organisms and materials alike
Finally at one meters deep the Rocks testify to the latter state of the material transformations of the soil the extent of human influence can be seen not only horizontally but also vertically by the accumulation of anthropic objects and actions that have penetrated the soil to its deepest level the model visualizes continuous flows
Between different ground levels the fluidity that is rarely associated with the Earth here a landslide crossed the merging of two strata therefore of two periods of time that would otherwise never have met elsewhere toxic substances are infiltrated through water contaminating deep round water the map allows these layers to be
Visualized by removing the scales and scanning the strata horizontally when concentrically replacing them around a void our atmosphere the effects at the surface of various phenomena have become equally important a fossil is as visible as a mine a volcano has a tank a network of pipelines as a water flowing between rocks
The soil like reversed skin reveals what happens directly under its surface depending on its composition it allows life or death the soul that we discover is thick granular reactive mixed filled with scoria inheritate from the movements and activities of the living beings who cross it literally in all directions
It is worn out in some places even sometimes with holes in it the model tries to make the boomerang effect tangible by putting the atmosphere at the center in a vacuum it shows that everything is scattered in the atmosphere comes back to us as we lived in a closed system
It’s as if there were no outside words and even the supposedly Eerie atmosphere is full nanoparticles clouds planes Birds spores pollution smoke it’s each object expelled into the sky Sky inevitably falls to the ground and sometimes it bounces and ricochets in the depth of the Earth space is not
Endlessly available either because the subsoil is already saturated now I will try to come back to my screen can I share my screen okay thank you so can everyone come back to my screen please so if everyone is ready I will continue with the next chapter with where we will decompose the model
Of this map that we’re just going to see and we’re just going to hear as a narrative and so with this kind of model we suggest exploring the Earth as a really Earth as soil or Ms and not as a globe uh the soil model try to make visible
This critical Zone the Earth Pinnacle that distributes and supports life forms from the rocks to the tree canopy and so he tends to understand also the thickness of the Earth the strata and the Earth layers it’s a visualization of the subsurface of the earth rather than its surface only
And so through a thought experiments the model visualizes A reversed globe and what was external before the atmosphere is now at the center and it suddenly confined in a closed reduced and narrow space and what was the deepest layers is now a ranch in concentric circles that move
Outwards towards the edges of the map and so in this way the anterior model focuses on the critical Zone this thin layer around the Earth where the soil the water and the Living World interact and we’re also it’s critical because human and on human life and resources
That sustain it are concentrated this is not in the space no in the globe but really in this critical Zone but that’s why it’s important also to visualize it and to understand what is inside but to analyze the circulation of the element that the scientists are tracing
In the layers of the critical Zone including the atmosphere we may have to devise another tool another visual model on instruments to understand for example the carbon cycle which is a huge climate change valuable and to do so we continue to work with the scientists of the critical Zone and
With one of them geochemists we started to devise a tool that will trace the cycle of the carbon but we see here in this short animation and it uses a particular code a graphic grammar uses Piers to visualize the speed at which the element is passing through the different Earth layers
And each specification of the Spiral means that the carbon has been transformed it represents a process and then the sum of the process constitutes a cycle so the cycle as our looping except for one if you look at the seven line it’s almost vertical contrary to the others and this shows the activity
Of human industries that brings back the carbon very quickly from the death to the atmosphere in such quantity that the recycling is not possible and so the aim of this visualization is ready to catch in a glimpse maybe I will the impact of human activity on the biogeochemical cycles but the criticals
On scientists are analyzing in their observatories and so with the carbon cycle we see that human is a strong perturbator and in other cases it creates previously inexistent Cycles such as with nitrates and disturb much more the Earth cycling and this is actually what I call a geography instead of a geography because
The focus is put on cycle fluxes and not only spatial boundaries and this focus on Cycles a lot to record the animation of Landscapes how the Earth is actually shaped by fluxes of elements if we compare the earth to Venus or Mars we would see that the composition of the
Atmosphere is completely different this is what love look and marvelous have shown with the Gaia hypothesis our atmosphere is chemically unstable and therefore viable for us it’s not in thermodynamic equilibrium like the other planets because bacteria emit gas that maintain the air conditioning of these planet Earth
And so when we think we are inside in architectural spaces and we think we are outside out of a building we are in fact always insights the Earth the landscape is an interior that is maintained transformed by living organisms we are inside enclosures created by life the exoskeleton of a mountain for
Example is also made up of dead microorganisms this has difference case but what is common is a capacity of living beings including humans to build the program is that the engineer’s capacity of humans and the other than humans are now in competition with Eastover and so this is actually the topic of the
Salt experiment the salt exhibition sorry critical zones which invites us to deal with the critical situation of the Earth in various ways and to explore new modes of coexistence between all life form so because of coronavirus we open both a virtual and physical exhibitions and for the virtual virtual exhibition we draw
The map of an observatory of the critical Zone using the soy model with real data from the scientists and at these critics that calzone Observatory which records the dynamic of the wash forests for 30 years we can have a lot of data with the instruments that are in
Blue uh on the on the map and this landscape has been impacted by acid Ray due to a lot of sulfur in the atmosphere as I told earlier and so we spent some time in the field with the scientists in the landscape but also in their labs and we try to understand each
Instruments and what Insight they get on nature and so we interview instruments on the map and on the website you can click on the instruments and you can watch films on the of the fields to understand better the practices of the scientists and you can also hear a kind of collaboration
With the compositor which who make a musical composition with the data of a scientists so the exhibition is now opened uh at the Z game in carlswold Germany and in the physical space you will find some of these elements but displayed in a quite different overall setting
We are here in the exhibition space and the main idea of this installation was to put the observatories Watershed inside the space of the museum so we recompose with observatory in the museum space and you see in fact the different instruments using the field which are constructed here
And they diffuse the various phenomena that it captures on the field so we did not represent a landscape like a picture or postcard but really with the scientists we decided to Simply show the instruments because they are the mediators the sensors of the landscape and the particularity is that they are
Placed in the same place as they are on the side so we kept to hate and uh to different let’s say to uh yes relationship with all the instruments so for example the one that are placed down swings don’t stream are placed Downstream in the museum and the
One at the top are placed in the top and you see the kind of skeleton as the structure through the museum it’s actually the topography which is reconstructed using geophones which are represented with the tubular section that you see in the axonometric view and on the feed the geophones is an
Instrument that sounds the ground at death by sending sending vibrations into it and it records the sensitivity of the soil to these vibrations in order to reconstruct rocks porosity that is where where rocks are more solid or where water is more going to go through and so
When you are in on the museum floor you actually below ground inside this Watershed and so the visitor has to explore this landscape so as we did in the field and um and she has a field work to orient herself and the instruments make you see or make you listen also invisible
Elements and the landscape Peters we have not seen as a block from an external point of view but rather from and through these entities these parts and this variation of the critical Zone and you yourself are inside and you are parked in some way of the critical Zone
The exhibition is much larger than the installation other artists contribute to multiply the tools for observation and this is rapidly the catalog with a lot of different interesting articles and now maybe to end the talk I will just introduce the exercise actually actually we can perhaps we can right now
Have a small discussion before before we move to the exercise because this was uh thank you so much for for such a wonderful talk so perhaps if you if you would like to stop sharing this screen and we can discuss maybe for uh maybe I would say 10 even 15 minutes and
Then we can introduce the exercise that great thank you so much uh I uh invite everybody to to come back with with their videos and perhaps a virtual Applause for Alexandra thank you so much uh so uh I I enjoyed the uh really tremendously this uh this talk for a kind of a
For the the sensitivity on many levels and the Beautiful use of terms but also the beautiful use of instruments and drawings um and perhaps I can I can start with with the leg with the with the question about the um I think that that um uh the idea of a critical Zone as
Opposed to a surface right is something that allows you to move from uh let’s say geography uh as as a simple kind of uh observation of the Earth’s surface to biography which uh which follows uh uh Cycles which which uh basically obliges us to look at the kind of dynamics of
The of the Earth Systems right or or a life supporting systems and critical Zone I I appreciate the term I I find it uh in fact we are talking about the Gaia Zone in a way that the Zone which supports life of or organic life which is indeed very thin and
You have described in in a beautiful case studies um let’s see three Um uh ghosts right so these are in fact your instruments so there are we talk about the soil and water and in a way air or the kind of a complex sort of chemistry of of air right and so I uh I uh I find it I find it uh
Very fascinating how how this uh uh let’s say as a kind of Instrumentarium as the intellectual Instrumentarium right and so I I would like to ask you so from this observation where you’re saying we have to work with Scientists now we have to we have to we cannot
Trust only our senses we have to work with actually sensors we we have to work with the information of that reveals the invisible to us right the intangible right so we we need to trust another kind of uh let’s say uh inputs into our uh to to
Complete our perception in order to be able to design right so this has many implications this means we have to be educated differently we have to completely reach you now to say so design sensibilities uh you know around to say so different priorities and so on
So I would I would like to ask you as as the landscape architect right um how how do you see these kinds of methods and insights and techniques unlocking the potentials to design also differently right because as you described we are looking at the number of urgencies obviously that where we
Should should be able to act and I think you know all the all the all the students who are today with us in this Auditorium you know should be able to to go out there and and you know make their be part of all that right or to sort of
Uh re rewiring or or you know redesigning those systems in a different way so so I would like to ask you where do you think we are right so where where are you right so so let’s say do we have the right kind of tools conceptual
Scientific to to to go into the field and start designing you know in uh in a manner that let’s say supports uh Gaia to say so or that that uh um that acts in a in a sensitive and kind of Life affirming manner in the critical Zone yes
Um well thank you for this and Well Done summarize I think it’s very exhaustive and complete um tourist way is just the story why I started to approach uh the criticals of this network so this is a network which is um spread from U.S to Europe so there is
Also observatory in Germany and also now in Asia and uh At first I felt uh disoriented because of the anthropocene and uh because um I felt that we didn’t have the writers to tackle this this issue which has bigger than uh sometimes also our design projects
But then when I started to uh thanks to bunolature uh who is working on this uh topic since many years so I uh I uh and I was introduced to the network and they have also a program an issue of representation this critical Zone and that’s where the architect or landscape
Architect can also make a contribution because they have the tools to draw and to conceptualize and also to work in a collaborative way with many different disciplines which is not okay for all uh the as a discipline of the practice and so it’s really we started to
Collaborate uh I bring the tours of design practice and the scientists bring their knowledge and we start to think about how to visualize this critical zone so it’s not too much so much about uh having the same knowledge than they have because it’s like a different topic and it’s a huge yeah it’s
Chemistry it’s Geo biochemistry or theophysics but it’s ready to collaborate and start to um yeah maybe to uh to design observed um maybe Urban observatories because because once they have are more um natural ones even if uh the anthropos is everywhere everywhere we can’t no more use nature the same way but maybe
Yeah for for design projects design a kind of observatory in urban context and try to gather a team around uh around the space a ground for land an observatory where we can walk together you know if it’s transformed wonderful yeah that’s uh I think exciting idea to start an urban Observatory maybe in
Zurich it’s something that we could do at the ath so I invite would do we have questions this morning uh maybe in a in a chat or or raise your hand somehow we will see you perhaps I can continue with the second question and then certainly the third
One goes into the audience so so I uh I find it fascinating that the work um really promotes a kind of a new Coalition with with Scientists now that this is this is really necessary and I think certainly if we want to talk about the soil or hydrology
Or or you know the the the movement of air and so on this is this is certainly uh um essential now the the question is that we we don’t educate uh architecture Landscape Architects in this manner right and and you’re you’re now a PhD student and you have to say so
Crafted your your way through the uh uh scientific realm let’s say and and Place yourself in a in a certain position which is not I think a position of a classical landscape architect right and perhaps you can talk a little bit about that a kind of essential uh
Coalition no in the in the field of uh in the realm of scientific knowledge so where where is the landscape architecture or a biographer or we could say perhaps Gaia architect where is that architect placed among uh other uh fields of let’s say knowledge where you’re close collaborators let’s see
Uh well maybe I will talk about this as a km exhibition um so we so it’s because I’m on the other part of my life member of sock Society for object orthographic where we try to think at alternative Maps but we also make this installation so we work a lot with the philosopher
With historians and with the scientists so there is a geochemist biochemist geophysician pedologists ideologists and maybe what the experience of this exhibition make us realize that we as Architects we are like a mediator also of all these disciplines and we can also make phone render concrete some IDs so maybe this is uh Yeah what’s uh what our major contribution to this exhibition is how to run the concrete sometimes IDs and also how to finally scale down uh the water shed inside the museum so you we use actually the tools of an architect the model but in just just slightly different way
And yeah the insulation is like a scale model so I don’t know if it’s answer to your question I think it’s a it’s a perfect answer it’s a perfect answer yeah thank you it’s it’s uh a wonderful answer how about our What questions more questions yes okay we have a question I think it’s Charlene right oh Charlene no okay sorry no that was not a question sorry oh that is okay no problem I would like I would like to ask actually a question to Alexandra regarding you know the the mapping of this uh
Um critical Zone you are making like what is the interest actually of the scientists in having this kind of maps and how does it contribute to their field like yeah what about yeah that do you know like in your conversations did it come up and how did you come up with
This uh let’s say collaboration and what is their interest in this um so yeah uh they have uh an issue regarding the representation of the critical Zone they only use this kind of either the globe but if you use a globe you can’t see uh the critical zone or a block diagram
With Harrows and to show the fluxes and so that’s um uh how we come to work together because as a architect we also have tools and we can think about Alternatives visualizations so we we start to work on this topic and uh the other thing is that these
Scientists are also interested in social studies and to be linked more with Humanities and politics because they are working on issues territorial issues and so sometimes they they have difficulties to speak to politicians or or make policies on territories and so this also interests them to to work with
Um with people who are background in Humanities or architecture because the architectural manager so policies in on the territory so that’s the two maybe two two um we are contribution or how we can also help them in their research or great I see two two questions actually
In the chat now also three four wow that’s great so we have uh so I I will invite first Leoni Wagner would you like to to to tell us your question it’s funner when you do it yourself here is learning good morning it’s here in the middle
Um of the section in your map we didn’t quite understand that okay so um first um the first issue was to make C make visible the thin layer of the critical Zone because at the scale of the earth we can’t see anything so first it was to make more plays for the soil
And then it comes naturally to put the atmosphere in the middle because of the interrelation between the soil and the atmosphere and so when the atmosphere is is at the center it’s also means that all the pollutants were that we emit from one place place is coming
Back in our Warheads and so when you put the atmosphere in the play in in at the center bounded by the soil and by the Rocks you you can’t imagine that the atmosphere uh there is um uh no limits but we have bonded actually there is limits even in the sky
And that’s why we have CO2 concentrating in the atmosphere that’s why we have too much nitrate that’s that’s why I think it’s these views of the globe is really mistaken because we we are the impression that we can we can have no planetary boundaries but I also I show
In the lecture with this diagram made by the earth science system we actually have boundaries and we over cross them so how not to Um um yeah I I mean maybe it’s it’s answer your question now and yeah okay absolutely that’s uh that’s a very clear question so the atmosphere is is finite and it’s captured inside the earth like in a room right and there is infinite amount of air in this room
And yes that’s very clear that’s great so uh wonderful so uh very very fantastic idea how representation can really expand our ways of seeing actually and in a in a very uh in a very urgent ways so we have a second question from lino good morning Lino where are you
I have a question actually because I was quite fascinating by all the new ways of representation that you use and that somehow expresses or represents some kind of reality that we don’t see anymore we don’t we cannot immediately see and I was wondering as a long step
Architect if you use them also to design or how I mean you are kind of exploding this traditional way of planning section and so wondering if you also use them to design or the project somehow or is there a way to okay um the first step that I’m going to do
Now it’s uh describe uh the different layers of this critical zone so we we don’t uh we didn’t use it um for now for project design but we hope maybe later but there is um first a very important step to describe what in which soil we are because it’s maybe
It’s not uh usual or so for design practitioners to spend a lot of time describing uh really what is the territory we we have also to slow down maybe even if we we are used also to to design and to propose things but I think this uh this
Slowing down is also important to be able to yeah to describe more precisely and and to propose something that is relevant also for territories um but after it’s kind of the is kind of the same it’s a visual that you can use also to uh uh for
I don’t know to bring your project but I am I I can’t tell because I didn’t experience it and as I am a pragmatist I Don’t Want to Go Frozen ah great I mean that’s uh I think it’s very clear and I think I agree that that
We we need time in order to um understand I mean to real just somehow our our paradigms right and I think paradigms that drive design right so like what what are our our standpoints our goals and so this involves a kind of a paradigmatic shift so I think on many
Levels I mean as as uh and I think that these are we are in the process of of doing that so indeed but these these I think these a very interesting observatories I mean they could also be used to evaluate the kind of possible scenarios
Isn’t it so let’s say if if one was to to somehow intervene in your Watershed right there are different ways of doing that and one could evaluate the kind of possible uh Futures using using that Observatory as as a kind of way to to simulate or suggest what might happen
And so on and I think this would this would give us a much much better ways to to negotiate between the different proposals so shall we do you know Carbon capture and storage or shall we do you know planting trees or or shall we you know how shall we uh I don’t know
Rebuild soil etc etc so so many different uh options are on the table you know or shall we just build new infrastructure and hydro them and I don’t know what so so I think these uh um also negotiating between these different scenarios very complex so we
Need the different kind of tools to to actually be able to to negotiate such complexity that arrives with design intervention no yeah I think that’s and and uh I just add that uh it’s actually the the criticizing scientists also I have to build model to predict things exactly I think with uh
Predictions can also be used uh in our landscape design project in a way so right wonderful so uh so we have uh two more questions and then we move to the exercise so this morning we have also Louis for your presentation I was wondering if the Universe plays a role in your model
As the universe has an impact on the soil on the atmosphere so does it have a role in your model as well but I would say that Universe play a role in the for the gravimeter for example that that records the very the gravity of the mass of the Earth but for the
Critical zone is um is very far from where we live and in the universe there is no life so it’s very centered to the earth I would say to the Earth but as uh as uh not far from few uh few meters down and few meters help
Which is a kind of boundaries of the critical Zone which is really uh plastic but still it’s not the entire universe I would say it’s not the universe great thank you I think this is this is really a philosophical question where where is life how why this is the critical zone is
There life in the in the universe or uh and so on and what what is so in a way the critical Zone really is the kind of a philosophical to say so perimeter of our understanding of of life let’s say on Earth and around earth and so on
Wonderful so we have our last question from Alex Alex Farina good morning yeah good morning can you hear me yes okay yeah I had a question about how and how much the economic and the political word we can say are involved in this studies but also in a more concrete way
In I don’t know trying to find regulations or large k plans and agreements about this topic okay and in your question it’s very original economic and political concrete involvement University okay how can I say economic I don’t know what it means um but in a political way I
Think when doing Arts also an exhibitions uh it’s it’s like doing a political reenactment of what can be done in the real world and that’s why also we are doing exhibition and I think Arts can be really politics uh because it’s it’s it’s not a top-down um
Let’s say uh top it’s not top down but it really brings uh something down uh to the people and then for the people to maybe after uh bring these actions uh in the in their world I don’t know if I if I uh yeah answer to your question but uh
I just said that um with the Arts with for promoting also on every uh every Mondays this this knowledge is uh political actions thank you great so we we will make exception for nasley she she she can uh she she gets an exception yeah please tell us your your
Question thanks a lot for the exception I mean I kind of find really interesting this differentiation between the world we live in and the world we live from and I think it’s quite also refreshing to see the whole let’s say this Gaia is the Terra Incognito something that we
Need to discover and this simultaneity of these two worlds and it’s almost like the world we live from which is also something that we are all interested in the terms of Hinterlands and this more than human territories Etc these invisibilized geographies let’s say that they are kind of Haunting
The world we live in so it’s like almost overflowing we are living in kind of like a stranger things world or something so I was wondering Within These criticals on observatories I guess one of the aims is to Invisible visibilize this world that we live from and I was wondering what happens when
These both worlds are superimposed or uh somehow come together and how does this also help us in our disciplines of design and planning uh I’m not sure I I understand the end of your question I mean this ways of representation I guess it’s one of the aims is to also visibilize this world
That we live from uh like this Hinterlands and resources Etc and what we have been maybe ignoring uh for a while now and how do you think this helps us in uh let’s say for the future um yeah it’s it’s uh yeah it’s totally that uh how uh this invisible geography
Haunted us I think it’s really uh but I’d I think maybe uh in our design project we should acknowledge the materials and also uh the the land that we use for doing projects I don’t know uh in which way but we are we are actually thinking about that in our actually Workshop um
Mm-hmm yeah it’s it’s it’s also a difficult uh yeah difficult approach because it’s difficult to trace uh all the elements or the materials so how do you account for this and this is where comes again the description and how to throw down because uh we don’t really know how to
Trace it and that’s why yeah the work with a scientist could be interesting because they are able to trace erosion for example uh or whereas different element come from uh what is in the atmosphere um yeah great thanks thank you this is uh this is wonderful so uh I think it’s it’s a
Great message in a way that there is a kind of a phenomenally urgent task for Architects and Landscape Architects out there for this generation as soon as you graduate please engage uh your your energy to to help move forward this uh tremendously important project and uh now uh to to get you started
Alexandria will present her exercise Hill was asking if there could be another exception for him but uh maybe afterwards let’s now move to to the exercise yeah okay uh so I did showing my screen again okay so the exercise we prepare is actually extracts for from uh the book
Uh terraforma and also the map that I present uh the soil the river soil is the first model of the seven chapters and in this book yeah each chapter each model leads to a map and I present uh the one in the right top rights
Uh and uh what the exercise is about is to actually make uh this soy model with a place that you choose it could be a place uh where you live in but so you will have to acknowledge the places you live from as we are discussed it could
Be also a place of your project design and so um the idea is to reconstruct this soil model using the three steps that I will developed and uh to um yeah to map a place a ground using this tool and maybe we will say we will see if it’s uh
Uh allowed to to have more valuity of 80 or heterogeneity so in the first steps the idea is to map the atmosphere what is above you and uh we also write some questions to help you to map it and to maybe you can answer first to this question and then
Try to draw it in the first circle of the atmosphere so how do you describe the chemical and physical matters of the earth that surrounds you and that to breathe what are the beings and processes that contribute to making your atmosphere what it is
And so you see you you know that air is invisible and yet there is a particles everywhere so you can also research a composition of your atmosphere we for example climate monitoring websites the second steps would be to under the uh to understand what is handle the surface so to map the soil
So this is the second Circle which is about 0 to 2 meters below ground s to to help you draw the question is what makes up the soil which is certainly the most important layer to you what is composed on which you live and in which you live so
Um there is also a difference between the on and in and you can also ask where do they come from all these materials how old they are where does water use come from how old is it and also where does the food you eat come from and how
How old is it and maybe it could help you I don’t know we will see and try to be also as exhaustive as possible uh what are the anthropogenic objects is there tuners pipelines Etc if you are in a urban context are there organisms are there Roots uh
What are the over uh tiny elements that you can’t see with the map but maybe if you try to see a dome there you can you can see you can imagine what is in inside and what is under our feet and the last step steps would be to
Map the Deep rocks so what is below ground speaking what are the beings and processes that enabled you to keep your house and most importantly which ones can destabilize it so maybe here you can search for geological data in books or in the internet or if you have the chance to
Interview some geologists you can also look for holes in the ground maybe better next to you a mine or Carrier um and uh yes that’s it and maybe you can go until yeah 100 meter it’s deep but with geological map you can find some interesting things to map
And so yeah so yeah the exercise may be if you share with it with your uh your fellow students you can you would see different understanding of the same soil and that’s what we can call also Gaia which is very heterogeneous as a surface I’ve had the Earth
So yeah maybe I will just come back to um the A3 the the sheet that you will have or maybe you already have it and yeah how do you describe each layers on the critical Zone from the atmosphere to these products and don’t forget I will I just say don’t
Forget the captions it’s very important don’t forget to name every elements on the map and then maybe also Imagine a story imagine that you have to explain this map which kind of exploration narrative could you you use if you are we have questions also maybe fantastic very clear and very um
Very to the point so basically Let’s uh let’s uh look beyond the the surface as an architect site is not just let’s say a plot but it’s a kind of a three-dimensional uh uh basically part you are in a certain place in the critical Zone and
Can you describe that that part of the critical Zone that you occupy either where you live or where your project is maybe it’s it’s something that would tie in very well to your current Design Studios that you’re doing so so that’s uh that would be that would be very
Interesting so let’s let’s have a few questions on the exercise and maybe after this I could take over present some parameters that we have so if there are no questions yeah we have a couple of more questions in the chat if uh um if there are no questions on the exercise
Mataxia will tell you about about the deadline and so on um I actually have a question Anna Maria okay great yeah so I don’t really understand in this map if we have to focus only on the soil or like in the atmosphere as a person I see an airplane
And this is not related to the soil can I draw on top of the map the airplane or it is it has nothing to do like I I just want some more explanation which kind of element you want us to map uh if it’s in your um
View situation you can and if it’s as a real impact on you you have to uh yeah to draw the plane because maybe the there’s a plane that’s yeah yeah the plane yeah or a bird I don’t know I mean because you talk about particles but from yeah exactly
If it has a real impact on your territory for example you are under um how do you say Corridor are real corridors and it’s make a lot of noise or a lot of yeah particles uh or if the birds are really important for this territory and that’s
Um and that you you know how also to map it or maybe you can find some information with birds Specialists to try to understand how they territories are working too so if this demands is really important in your city territory that you are mapping you have to yeah
You have to to map it even if it’s like an object or an organisms or living beings it’s uh it matters yeah okay okay thanks I mean the the the interesting part is of course this change of projection right so you are you are taking something which is organized in a kind
Of a radial Centric principle no so it’s not a kind of a plenometric grid anymore but it’s basically your drawing nested spheres right atmosphere soil Deep Rock right so this is a different way of looking yeah and just um you you don’t have too much to focus on this case you can draw
Tiny elements like for example for sales which are very tiny uh but also like big movements but um you can’t you can try to make them bigger than they they are so there is no release case but it’s more of depending on the importance of the element we have
I see a couple of questions coming up in the chat so for instance one is can can we have the slides sure you will you will get the slides as soon as the lecture finishes as I responded to some of them already right and then we we
Have a question from Maximilian who says should the exercise be understood that’s scientific or can it be conceptual so that’s an interesting question is there ever a difference I wonder what do you think Alexandra uh if she has to be scientific it was the question uh can the exercise
Be understood as scientific or can it be conceptual ah okay um it adds to be the more precise because the aim is really to um to describe what you are in so I would say that you can extrapolate you can imagine some things but
Uh you yeah you have to to be precise in the elements to maybe not too much conceptual but really stick to the and yeah I mean I would say to to the extent that you have the the data try to be precise and sometimes you simply won’t
Have the information but you will have a rather uh you will be able to to suggest the existence of a certain uh let’s say cycle or a ghost or or a you know based on based on information that is perhaps not uh uh you know quantifiable or or you
Know Quantified or or so basically I think in that case you can be to say some more sketchy right yeah and so let’s say try to to link the the kind of representation with the kind of information that you have yeah and I think what you showed Alexandra is
Also that scale is not crucial in the sense that if some elements are let’s say microscopic but they are hugely important right so you you will rather to say so exaggerate the scale in order to to to to to say so to link um everything in a in a uh according to
The kind of hierarchy of things that you see right so you you are you are re-establishing the the kind of perceptions of of hierarchies and importance of elements by by exaggerating scale essentially exactly great and uh um okay there are there are various other uh questions we will answer them one one
Interesting one uh do we have to read design with nature for next session I have to comment on that it’s a very thin book and make sure that you read it as soon as possible maybe not for the next session but really as soon as possible because it’s very useful for
For your life in the future as an architect okay so uh for the next session I think it’s if you don’t have the time at least try to have an overview because this book is it’s a little bit um I mean you need to have the overview to understand
What’s happening otherwise it’s it’s not complete great so uh so uh I uh I think uh to may I ask you my taxi would you would you like to to just give us a couple of parameters and then we might have in the end of one one more question for
Alexandra yes the first I want to thank Alexandra I think the lecture was really nice and somehow touching in a way so thanks thanks so much for this um I’m sharing my screen it’s I hope you see my keynote so actually uh just to remind you that this
Is one of the three graded exercises that we will have this semester so the sketches you’re doing you’re not in the beginning of its course are not graded but this one will be so we ask you to to use an A3 paper in a horizontal format
You can be free to respond either with a hand drawing a digital drawing or a mix of both uh you would need to to upload that the server the exercise by the 15th of October and we would like to ask you also to send a hard copy to the chair at
The end of the semester together with the other exercises um here reminding you that at the end of the semester we’re actually making an archive of your exercises this is from preview semesters where the concept was um or the theme was my my Zurich um so we actually tried to collect all
Your hand sketches and this remains as a kind of archive of these discussions and also of the the topics with we tackled uh so try to really take care in the way you do these exercises because they will remain in the future um as milita mentioned
Um we will send you an email with um the slides that Alexandra prepared for you um also with the parameters and I think this is all for the exercise um maybe if we can take one minute to say that we are receiving really a lot
Of questions from all of you and as you are quite many and you most of you reply to the mail it’s a little bit difficult to keep track of all the questions so it would be nice if you could address the questions at the end of the lecture
So that we can reply in a way that everybody follows the answers um I think this is all from my side I hope you were able to connect now to the core server make sure you’re inscribed at my studies because this is how we send the weekly mail we use the email
That you have there so that’s it for my site and thanks again Alexandra for this beautiful lecture yeah it’s uh uh I am wondering uh um uh whether to to continue the discussion but we I think we are at at uh already close to uh close to the the expiry of
Our time so I would I would rather rather suggest that we that we stop here and actually Alexandra if you agree we would we would send you the exercises to have a look at them and yeah I will fantastic so perhaps you will you will share with us a small comment that we
Will we will bring back to the students now yeah sure and if you want great so so innovate the the we we don’t ask Alexander to actually grade because it’s it’s a lot of work so let’s say we will we will grade but we will certainly take Alexandria’s
Criteria on board and and the grade accordingly and I see uh one more question was also partly regarding the scale what is the area of observation we are talking about are we focusing on the ground right below us or a quarter of a city so so there is a you have to look
At at the template so Alexandra made the sketch so it really focuses on the scale of a human being so it’s it’s really rather a kind of an area in the close proximity around you no so you can it is I would say there is not a kind of
A macro effort here but I think scale is actually even even with that uh uh I think scale is is is perhaps uh can can vary from student to student I mean let’s say the the notion of the site or a place can can one can one can
Determine what is important right but I think it can be it can be rather rather rather to say so uh small in the end right yeah because the most you enlarge your areas the most it will be difficult maybe to get the data so in order to not complex too much exercise
You can yeah either focus on your culture or maybe a place that you uh you you travel very often like maybe a park or you can also choose a ruins landscape it’s going to be also interesting a place that you you know which is not too much large but outside also
Maybe you can do in the building but it could be more difficult Maybe uh you can also experiment uh with what you think it will be interesting to to map it’s very experimental so yeah great this is fantastic we are doing experiment in biography of critical zones very necessary experiments so it’s
Your your let’s say inspired contributions on this new form of representation are most welcome so with this I I thank Alexander very warmly for for this wonderful lecture I hope you you had all a very good morning and uh that you’re all inspired today and
Please uh let’s uh let’s do a very nice virtual Applause for Alexandria right now thank you Alexandra thank you all for listening thank you thank you so much thank you for for being with us if you like stay with us Alexandra for a minute online and uh have a great week