ADS8: Afterlives

What remains of the crime? Through the lens of afterlives, sacrifice zones, low-impact materials, and supply chains, ADS8 explores architecture and microclimates in the colonial continuum.

As defined by its ability to inflict violence, toxicity encompasses a wide spectrum of substances that exert hazardous effects on earthly communities and ecologies. Toxicity flows and manifests through various avenues. Whether they are biological or petrochemical substances tainting the air, waters, soils or otherwise. Or political climates regulating the very existence of ‘existents’ – human and nonhuman bodies – which both contribute to the wider tapestry of toxification. As stated by Achille Mbembe, to exist in this world means to be haunted by an ever-imminent possibility of being no more (Mbembe, 2023). Yet, conditions of precarity and degrees of vulnerability and exposure are unequal, shaped by the ramifications and mutations of colonialism’s logics and landscapes. 

As we continue to build on ADS8’s investigations into anatomies of Empires, this year we will examine the continuum of extractivism through the lens of afterlives: the continuum of toxic climates. Our inquiries will foreground ecological bodies, as they are simultaneously sites of, witnesses to, and actors in, political instrumentality, violence and resistance. These bodies are interscalar, interstructural, intertemporal and interspecial, human and nonhuman, individual and collective, part and whole. Moreover, they are entities that move across geological timescales and, as we humans move with(in) them, can act as disobedient bodies and carriers of multiple stories. Consequently, these situated ecological bodies constitute the mediums through which the studio will critically investigate the multidimensional nature of toxicity to generate radical spatial proposals that are non-extractive, non-toxic, and low-impact. 

Within material culture, the selection and choice of construction materials directly impacts the formation and longevity of built forms. While the journey and supply chains of materials are often obscured, but commonly marked by lax regulations, extractive and exploitative land and labour practices, the industrial processes that produce these materials, together with their subsequent disposal, contribute to the accumulation of toxic substances in built and natural environments. This cycle gives rise to what Macarena Gómez-Barris has defined as sacrifice zones (Gómez-Barris, 2017).

In her poignant book In the Wake (2016), Christina Sharpe provides a critical offering that allows us to read the climate as both metaphorical and material. In her conceptualisation of anti-Blackness as atmospheric, she discloses the relationship between atmospheres, i.e. the political contexts we inhabit, and the climates of anti-Blackness. Following her thinking, the weaponisation of atmospheres allows certain bodies to thrive, while others are left to languish, resulting in the slow violence of toxic dumps and toxification of bodies and communities, which relegated to fringes of territory, to sacrifice zones.  

Sacrifice zones are attributed to geographies that bear the brunt of destructive cycles— from resource and material extraction, to industrial processing, and production. While biological and petrochemical toxicity stems from pollutants and contaminants – including microplastics, dust clouds, chemical gasses, and more – that are discharged into ecosystems and atmospheres, sacrifice zones manifest as sites that hold bodies and matter sacrificed to the logics of profit, ‘development’, and ‘progress’, while also placing ecological violence, health hazards, and economic marginalisation at the heart of their activities (Verzier, 2023). Emblematic of the interplay between extraction and exploitation, these zones embody the inherent logic of extractivism – a cosmology, or worldview – that holds capitalist accumulation as its core value and driving force (Brown, 2022).

Above all, sacrifice zones represent a complex nexus that calls into question the architect’s role and ethical responsibilities with regard to construction, procurement of materials, and the broader societal implications of architectural practice. To this end, through 2023/24 ADS8 will focus on matter, experimentation, and advocacy through built and non–built forms that question the ‘sustainability narratives’ attributed to current modes of production, which drive the industry and impact on lifeworlds. 

For this, we ask: 

Along the continuum of extractivism, where are commonly used construction materials produced? 

While these materials are marketed as ‘low-VOC’ or ‘energy-efficient’ on the consumer end, what toxicity and other forms of violence occur at the time and in the geographies of their production?

How are these geographies connected to long legacies of colonial extraction and the creation of sacrifice zones? What lessons can be drawn from traditional, or vernacular building practices, and how do they relate to low-impact materials?

As we simultaneously operate across experimentation and advocacy, navigating the intricacies between spatial design, environmental justice, and social responsibility, students are asked to reflect on how alternative material options can be incorporated into collective knowledge systems at local, regional, or global scales. In doing so, we ask how architects might collectively push back against corporate branding and promotion that leads to the over-saturation of markets with petrochemical-based materials, while insisting there is no alternative to such materials? Students will be challenged to propose not only a spatial proposal using non-extractive materials, but also a manifesto for promoting collective knowledge of such materials and processes.

ADS8 is envisioned as a migratory studio that situates itself between colony and metropole, and between historically and culturally entangled territories. While chapter one 22/23 focused on Portugal and its colonial counterparts, this second iteration opens with the possibility of students situating themselves in a geography – a sacrifice zone along the colonial continuum – of their own choosing. Drawing from the spectral, the speculative, and the political, we will generate spatial propositions pushing for microclimates against the afterlives of toxicity, prompting us to imagine reparative justice at different scales.

Notes:

Brown, Imani Jacqueline. (2022): 'Ecological Witnessing.' Published in Crone, Bridget, Nightingale, Sam, and Stanton, Polly, eds., Fieldwork for Future Ecologies. Onomatopee. Eindhoven.

Gómez-Barris, Macarena (2017): The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Duke University Press.

Lambert, Léopold (2017): Introduction: A ‘Breathing Combat’ Against the Toxicity of the Colonial/Racist State. Published in: The Funambulist 14 ‘Toxic Atmospheres’. Paris. 

Mbembe, Achille (2023): La communauté terrestre. La Découverte. 

Moore, Jason (2015): ‘Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital’. Verso Books. London, New York. 

Sharpe, Christina (2016): In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press. 

Waco, Margarida (2021): ‘Counterpoints: Extraction, Race, and Global Capitalism.’ Published in Tayob, Huda, ed., Archive of Forgetfulness. Jacana Media. Johannesburg. 2023.  

Yusoff, Kathryn (2019): A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press.

Tutors:

Margarida Waco is an architect and writer originating from Cabinda (Angola). She is an editorial advisor to The Funambulist, where she recently headed the strategic outreach. She has previously held positions as assistant researcher at the Royal Danish Academy, as lead curator at the Aarhus Architecture Festival, and as a practicing architect operating from offices in Paris, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. Her work has appeared at Palais de Tokyo, Malmö Art Museum, Nyansapo Afrofeminist Festival, Archive of Forgetfulness, Afterall, The Funambulist, among others.

Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, activist, and architectural researcher originally from New Orleans, now based in London. Her work investigates the “continuum of extractivism,” which spans from colonialsim and slavery to fossil fuel production. In so doing, she opens spaces to imagine paths to ecological reparations. Among other things, Imani is currently a researcher with Forensic Architecture, as well as a PhD candidate at Queen Mary, University of London. Full bio.

Meriem Chabani is an Algerian-French architect, urban planner and founding partner at New South. By questioning power dynamics and stakeholder relations, her projects offer evolutive intersections between the global South and the global North. She currently teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Malaquais (FR) and HEAD Geneva (CH). In 2020, Meriem won a Europe 40 under 40 award from The European Centre for Architecture and The Chicago Athenaeum.