Announcing the new ArCCAT reading group

The Architecture + Cities Climate Action Taskforce is starting a monthly online reading group. We will begin with Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn. This will take place on 2nd March, 16.00 – 17.30. If you wish to join the reading group, please contact Ro Spankie at r.spankie@westminster.ac.uk and she will send you the Teams meeting link.  

The reading group is open to all staff, students and other university employees who are interested in engaging with debates around architecture’s response to the climate crisis.   

Readings will be short. For the first reading group meeting, all we ask you to read is the Introduction to Flourish (pp.1-19). The library holds an e-copy which you can access, or if you wish to purchase a copy, go here: https://www.triarchypress.net/flourish.html. In addition, Sarah and Michael have a wonderful podcast series in which they engage with a number of interesting people about the issues the book raises: https://www.flourish-book.com/flourishsystemschange-podcast 

We are aware that 02 March is a potential day of strike action, but we feel a reading group is not ‘work’ and are also hopeful the University and Union might reach an agreement. 

The Expanded Territories Reading Group: “Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet”, Tuesday 2nd May, M330, 17:30

The Expanded Territories Research Group in the Department of Architecture has started a reading group, which will meet at 17.30 on the first Tuesday of every month in the Monsoon Assemblages Project Office, Room M330, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS.

We will read one agreed book or essay per month related to the anthropocene, more-than-human ontologies, climate change or any other topics the group puts forward, and discuss it in relation to architecture, landscape, art and design.

All are welcome – staff, students, friends, even if you are not a member of Expanded Territories or have done no prior reading in these areas. All we ask is that you read the book agreed each month!

The inaugural reading will be:

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (eds.)
Introduced by Corinna Dean and Victoria Watson

When: Tuesday 2nd May 2018, 17.30

Where: Room M330, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS

Accompanied by wine and nibbles

 

About Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies live-ability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene.

The book is available on Amazon or in other bookstores or downloadable chapter by chapter here: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52400