Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0195 - Architecture of Extraction: Imagining New Modes of Resource Acquisition through Speculative Design

In this seminar, which is part of the Environments and Change Learning Collaborative, students will learn about the processes through which we seek out and acquire the resources needed for the infrastructure of our built environment. This course will provide students with analytical and representational tools from the earth sciences and the architectural discipline as a way to understand and communicate the climate, social, and economic imbalances and injustices intrinsic within our global resource chains. In addition to studying geological and architectural principles, we will use our time together to engage with examples of speculative fiction, and speculative art and architecture as inventive models by which to reimagine our current systems extraction. Students will use the semester to explore one resource of their choice, and will, in return, create an alternative prototype - through a chosen form of representation - to suggest a new way of obtaining, using, or existing among their chosen resource. There are no prerequisites. Keywords:extraction, mapping, architecture, geosciences, speculative fiction

Environments and Change Lab/Materials fee: $30 Students should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time