Post Carbon Material Practices: Realities in the Age of Climate Crisis

This symposium examines new material practices in architecture and design in the age of climate crisis. It takes place in hybrid form at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (ABK) situated adjacent to modernist icon and UNESCO World Heritage Site Weissenhof Estate and is open to a global audience. The event is organized by The Laboratory AA Visiting School Stuttgart, a cross-disciplinary initiative of the AA at the ABK that brings together architects, artists, designers and researchers to speculate about our life in the future-now.

Covid-19 and the climate emergency have enhanced our material sensibility and refocussed our vision onto our real problems. As vital to our life on this planet as water and air, material resources are finite and can’t be (mass)reproduced. The material ethos that has underwritten the fields of architecture and design is shifting.

The symposium probes and charts the contemporary frontiers of material practices in the age of climate crisis putting the responsibility for our future back into our own court. Material itself is a pressing design question and task. Developing acute sensibilities about material’s role in ecological processes has become increasingly urgent.

Three roundtables feature AA and ABK staff and projects, invited guests and leading experts around the themes of “Embodied Material Actions,” “Expanded Material Agency,” and “Affective Material Matters.” 

“Embodied Material Actions” looks at how we can and built on in a renewed understanding of the philosophy and culture of materials. Which new relationships and (inter)actions emerge from this? 

“Expanded Material Agency” examines how we can become active agents in initiating the shift towards a circular and reuse economy of the built environment. From questioning the architectural ethos, building multidisciplinary alliances to a possible political economy.

“Affective Material Matters” discusses how a dialectic materialism might revolutionize aesthetic and social values. What are forms of cohabitation and solidarity, human and non-human, and how does this shape our notion of materiality?

These questions are addressed in a hybrid format: each roundtable invites the speakers and moderator both online and on site. Staged in person at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design and simultaneously broadcasted live on the digital channels of the institutions offering different ways of participating.

Speakers
Marjan van Aubel (Solar Designer, Het Nieuwe Instituut), Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (Harvard Graduate School of Design), Sven Pfeiffer (studiosvenpfeiffer, Bochum University of Applied Sciences), John Palmesino & Ann-Sofi Rönnskog (Territorial Agency, AA School of Architecture), Galaad van Daele (ETH Zurich, Accattone Magazine), Ye Jin Lee & Hanna Fastrich (Tropos Magazine), Kerstin Müller (Zirkular), Christopher Pierce (AA School of Architecture).

Chaired by 
Marianne Mueller (ABK, AA Visiting School Stuttgart) and Chrissie Muhr (ABK, AA Visiting School Stuttgart).

The programme can be attended both on-site in person or online. 
The event will be accredited, and participants will be able to receive CPD Points. 

Please register via Eventbrite. 
Registration will be open until November 4, 2021. On-site capacity will be limited.

Contact
Find further updates and information on the website AA Visiting School Stuttgart.
Or contact directly visitingschool [​at​] aaschool.ac.uk or stuttgart [​at​] aaschool.ac.uk.

The event is funded by the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Würrtemberg.