Lighter

More light, less mass. By 2050 the world population is expected to swell by more than two and a half billion people (UNEP). This will increase the resources required to operate cities, ameliorate human condition: it is an increase that will augment the material and energy flux of the contemporary city. It is also a unique opportunity to engage with the renewal of urban systems, architectural production and low carbon, socially just cities that can augment the biosphere instead. Lighter: more photosynthesis.

How to engage? How to innovate? How to imagine agency when the sheer magnitude of human activities have made the material structures we inhabit a self-organising system, where we are only a component of a complex and turbulent dynamic, not the main driver? New technologies, new forms of energy, new materials, new systems. Current answers to the difficult questions about how to maintain the habitability of our planet are all logistical, they accelerate the notions of design and innovation, they add technology to the technosphere. Yet the steps on how to take contemporary cities towards sustainable pathways are largely known. Yet not engrained and intersected with cultural production. How to make cities lighter?

Curated by Ann-Sofi Rönnskog & John Palmesino, Territorial Agency