The effects of the anthropogenic climate crisis have compelled a resurgence in scholarship about the often fraught relationship between the built and the natural environment. The connection between the building sector and the disruption on the physical systems of the planet are not merely coincidental, but causal. Currently, global building activity produces nearly 40% of the world’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions, making architecture, broadly, one of the most polluting activities in human history. That a new “climatic turn” appears to be taking shape in architecture history is no surprise, but does the changing climate also require new methodologies for writing architecture history? If historians now know that architecture is causing ecological harm, how should the field of architecture history respond? Seen through the lens of environmental justice, does the climate crisis impel architectural histories of the environment to address decolonization and anti-racism?
Conference venue
Harpa
Austurbakka 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland
Dates
October 11–13, 2023
Optional tours on October 14
Registration opens in May 2023. Questions? Email [email protected].
Organizers
Ambasz Institute at MoMA
Iceland University of the Arts
European Architectural History Network (EAHN)
This conference was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.