Media of Transition. How to Continue to Love Architecture in the Anthropocene

The discourse of the Anthropocene challenges cultural, political, economic, and social processes and attitudes that appropriate human and non-human resources in terms of their domestication and exploitation in architecture (from design to construction). To overcome ordinary creative processes of form-finding, a shift from form to knowledge is required to repositioning design as generative inquire. Architectural design as generative inquire has the potential to offer a viable contribution to contemporary change sensing and transforming the human impact on earth. Here, a design practice is imagined that fosters the multimedia exploration of the local in its various entanglements with the global. This implies a new conception of the design studio, which, equipped with existing tools, adapts and produces knowledge anew. In this lecture a conception of architectural design as a hybrid interplay of media will be presented and made visible through tangible practices.

About Lidia Gasperoni

Lidia Gasperoni is a postdoc research and teaching associate at the Department of Architectural Theory since 2018. She studied philosophy in Rome, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Berlin. She obtained her PhD from the TU Berlin and an associate professor habilitation in Italy in the field of aesthetics. She teaches architectural theory and philosophy, with a focus on media philosophy, Anthropocene theories, and aesthetics at the TU Berlin and previously at the UdK Berlin as well as the University of Kassel. Her publications include Media Agency, with Christophe Barlieb (transcript 2020), Construction and Design Manual: Experimental Diagrams (DOM publishers 2022), and Epistemic Artefacts. A Dialogical Reflection on Design Research in Architecture, with Matthias Ballestrem (AADR 2023).