Plan the Planet

At a time when the risk of self-reinforcing feedbacks spinning the Earth System into new trajectories of rapid and vast ecological changes is growing, this seminar explores new forms of agency, new relations between actors, new polities and new spaces of cohabitation. 

A new intensification is shaping the Earth, where human activities are triggering a vast ecological crisis and affecting the deep structures of the planet. From within, this intensification appears as the result of our actions, hence the capacity to act on it lies with us. Yet, the magnitude of this intensification are so vast that they are operating at a planetary level, where we are only one of the components of a rising new paradigm dominated by technology, not its main driver.

This torque is where we begin this Open Seminar series: starting from a critical revaluation of the modernist planning system initiated by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, a largely unacknowledged woman at the very centre of every turn of architectural development in the 20th century, we explore how architectural projects can interact with and engage different disciplines in the difficult and urgent process of planning for our planet. 

AA Diploma 4 tutors John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog / Territorial Agency  convene this open seminar and ask how cultural institutions can affect change, how diplomacy and negotiations can inform new forms of politics, how democracy can face the rise of extraterritorial technology, how the life of plants is the starting point of any serious discussion on energy, how economy and ecology can be rethought. We bring philosophers, economists, curators, activists, artists, scientists, journalists, architects, planners to the table. Join us, all welcome!

Open Seminars begin at 6:30pm in the AA Lecture Hall

Monday, October 7
How to think with others?
Lucia Pietroiusti (Serpentine Galleries) in conversation with Territorial Agency

Monday, October 14
Can we control the planet?
Lecture by Territorial Agency

Monday, October 21
What is a state of nature?
Michael Smythe, Thomas Thwaites and others
Organised by Silvana Taher and Matilde Cassani

Monday, November 4
Anthropocene: when are we?
Emanuele Coccia (SciencesPo, Paris), Charlie Kronick (Greenpeace), Jan Zalasiewicz (Anthropocene Working Group) and Catherine Russell (University of Leicester)

Monday, November 11
What is a revolution?
With Tim Lenton (Global Systems Institute, Exeter), Frédérique Aït-Touati (SciencesPo, Paris)

Monday, November 18
How to confront a world on fire?
Fernanda Balata and David Powell (New Economics Foundation), Lindsay Bremner (Westminster University), Adrienne Buller (Labour for Green New Deal) and AAction
Organised by Jose Alfredo Ramirez with Ed Wall and Tim Waterman

Monday, November 25
Is law from the Holocene?
With Davor Vidas (Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo), Alain Pottage (London School of Economics) and others

Monday, December 2
Climate peace
Lecture by Territorial Agency

The Open Seminar elaborates on notions of planning at a time of crisis, stemming from a research on the legacy of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt first organised at the Architectural Association in 2015. The series is supported by the Graham Foundation grant Plan the Planet: Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and the Formation of International and Global Architecture.