Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design is putting all work and programs on hold indefinitely.

We consider it impermissible to carry on business as usual in the present situation while lives in Ukraine are being lost.

Since its foundation, the Institute’s work has been focused on researching cities and developing ideas for a planetary future. While this mission remains essential, for a productive conversation about the future, there needs to be peace.

Establishing dialogue and cessation of hostilities in Ukraine is the single most important goal right now.

Strelka Institute stands in solidarity with everyone pleading for an immediate end to this armed conflict.

Kerem Ozan Bayraktar: Strands

Strands is a project by artist Kerem Ozan Bayraktar for the Busan Sea Art Festival 2021. The mixed-media installation in a small fishing tent forms a mysterious habitat that immerses us into the dark, labyrinthine world of eels. Through Strands, the artist not only experiments with the possibility of redesigning the ideological hierarchy between humans and non-humans, but also the interrelations among inorganic objects, living bodies, and digital media.

Kerem Ozan Bayraktar: Strands A mixed-media installation for the Busan Sea Art Festival 2021.

Strelka alumni architect Fabrizio Furiassi contributed to the new issue of the Log Magazine highlighting various aspects of Italy’s position in postcolonial architectural discourse. In his essay he takes on the Mafia’s role in the production and transformation of space in postwar Sicily and questions the agency of architects in the industry since then. Be sure to check out: https://stre.lk/MQLZ

Excerpt: ‘The Revenge of the Real’ by Benjamin Bratton

In The Revenge of the Real, Benjamin Bratton envisions a new positive biopolitics that recognizes that governance is literally a matter of life and death. He argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on a new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention. Strelka Mag publishes an excerpt from The Revenge of the Real.

Excerpt: ‘The Revenge of the Real’ by Benjamin Bratton The future of politics after the pandemic.

Timeline photos

The Terraforming final year kicks off in Istanbul! For the next 7 days researchers will get acquainted and introduced to key thematic insights and findings from the previous year's cycle as well as address the new design-research themes in the context of the conceptual scope of the program and start the work on group projects. Today has started with the first seminar by program director Benjamin H. Bratton, covering the 2022 research themes: "Artificial Environments", "Astropolitics", "Synthetic Materialism", "Planetary Sapience".

The Autocene: Towards a Post-Automotive Future

The Autocene is a period in which all of Earth’s systems have been altered by machines. The design challenge is directing the trajectory—the Autocene we have today may be the antithesis or apotheosis of the Autocene to come.
An essay by Stephanie Sherman.

The Autocene: Towards a Post-Automotive Future Stephanie Sherman on the rise of pervasive automated planetary machines.

All Under Heaven: Sоvereignty and Infrastructure After Globalization by Seiche and Strelka Mag is a design-research project that explores how waves of globalization have shaped and reshaped political, social, and economic paradigms over the past century, stretching and bending the meaning of sovereignty. https://seiche.strelkamag.com/

A Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Paul N. Edwards argues that climate change is an infrastructural problem, it’s not an individual action problem. Read his interview on Strelka Mag: https://stre.lk/cBHr

"Working really hard, any of us can maybe cut our carbon footprint by 10 or 20 percent, but we will not get to zero. We just can’t, because it’s embodied in the goods we buy, the food we need, and everything else. So we really need policy change, and technology change, to get to a place where we can at least have some hope of limiting climate change."

Happy New Year! Strelka team wishes you a peaceful and healthy 2022!

The Content House: The New Cottage Industry of Platform Inhabitation

What does the dramatic rise of the TikTok “Content House” mean for architecture and domesticity? Christopher Burman explores the model of platform as habitat.

The Content House: The New Cottage Industry of Platform Inhabitation Christopher Burman on TikTok and the transformations it brings to architecture and domesticity.

Deep Zoning: The Planetary Organization of Life

How can the geographical organization of the planet be conceived beyond the spatial dimension? Can zoning, a familiar planning tool for shaping cities, be a relevant device for organizing the non-city landscapes that support urban life? What kind of zoning would that be?

Read an essay by Nikos Katsikis and Daniel Daou.

Deep Zoning: The Planetary Organization of Life Nikos Katsikis and Daniel Daou on how the geographical organization of the planet can be conceived beyond the spatial dimension.

All Under Heaven: Sovereignty and Infrastructure After Globalization

The dominant model of global governance, carrying an imprint of Euro-Atlantic political culture, is being contested today by China’s vision for the world order, embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative. The logics and dynamics of these competing models of globalism are obviously different, but what is their standing with respect to the planet—the underlying “thing” they aim to organize? Are there any hints of an alternative model of planetary governance that would successfully address the problems that resist containment within nation states? And, most importantly: could the infrastructures that are already in place—physical, legal, and digital—be used for more innovative purposes, accommodating collective decisions about planetary governance?

All Under Heaven: Sovereignty and Infrastructure After Globalization Conversations on the shifting role of sovereignty in an era of transnational and extrastate networks.

Reimagining Borders & Mobility: An Open Index Of Planetary Principles

At a time when the governing of current border configurations and mobility is proving to be inadequate at responding to planetary crises, how can they be reconsidered via reimagining borders not as static barriers but as functions able to respond coordinately to today’s planetary demands? Can borders be redrawn to address mobility not as a privilege but as a condition of solidarity and exchange?

A project by The Terraforming researchers María Buey González, Alla Semenovskaya, Joel Fear, Alisa Pashkova.

Reimagining Borders & Mobility: An Open Index Of Planetary Principles Can borders be redrawn to address mobility not as a privilege but as a condition of solidarity and exchange?

THE TERRAFORMING CURRICULUM IV: FINAL DESIGN BRIEF & DESIGN PUSH

Focus on the final projects research, prototyping, development and presentation, as well as their strategic assessment for future development and opportunities for implementation / broadcasting. The fourth offline part will start with project team formations and include weekly design reviews and feedback from design tutors and visiting / remote experts until the final public presentations.

A Century of Disappointment: Reappraising Neoliberalism

The collapse of neoliberalism has been widely discussed long before the outbreak of COVID-19. The pandemic has even further exposed deep shortcomings in the dominant mode of global economic and political organization. Quinn Slobodian talks about what exactly does it mean to diagnose the crisis of the neoliberal project.

A Century of Disappointment: Reappraising Neoliberalism Quinn Slobodian on the crisis and critical perspectives of global governance

Nomadic Imaginaries and Chinese Globalization

How might an understanding of the complex relations surrounding the ancient Silk Road inform our understanding of large-scale infrastructures of today?

Read an interview with curator and researcher You Mi.

Nomadic Imaginaries and Chinese Globalization You Mi on Silk Road and our understanding of large-scale infrastructures.

On Frictionless Sovereignty

A conversation with Ryan Bishop about the complex networks of alliances and systems that scaffold globalization.

On Frictionless Sovereignty Ryan Bishop on the complex networks of alliances and systems that scaffold globalization.

Eating the Planet

Since its emergence in mid-century America, the organizational logic of the supermarket has gripped the planet as a whole, reorganizing populations and the microbiology of the products on sale within it. By looking at the tomato—the number one selling fruit (or vegetable) worldwide—Tigran Kostandyan, Mario Santanilla, and Abubakr H. Ali build an alternative model for means of food creation, distribution, and consumption within energetic and ecological boundaries.

Eating the Planet Tigran Kostandyan, Mario Santanilla, Abubakr H. Ali look into the supermarket tomato as a microcosm for the past and present of food production at scale.

Today is the last chance to join our program: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

“All Under Heaven: Sоvereignty and Infrastructure After Globalization” is a special project by Seiche and Strelka Mag, created with the support of the Design Trust Seed Grant. https://seiche.strelkamag.com/

It explores how waves of globalization have shaped and reshaped political, social, and economic paradigms over the past century, stretching and bending the meaning of sovereignty. The project features an essay by Seiche collective and five conversations on the shifting role of sovereignty in an era of transnational and extrastate networks, with expert input from Ryan Bishop, Mi You, Quinn Slobodian, Matt Ferchen, and Murphy Mok.

Seiche team: Mikhail Anisimov, Yulia Gromova, Tomas Clv, Katya Sivers, Andrei Zhileikin

Research Advisor: Lukáš Likavčan

Editors: Philip Maughan, Theo Merz, Timur Zolotoev, Lynsey Free

The concept was initially conceived during the 2018 The New Normal program at the Strelka Institute. Program Director: Benjamin Bratton. Design Faculty: Nicolay Boyadjiev, Maria Slavnova

THE TERRAFORMING FACULTY: LYDIA KALLIPOLITI

Lydia is an award-winning architect, engineer, scholar, and curator working at the intersection of architecture, technology, and environmental politics. She is looking in particular at closed and self-reliant systems and urban environments. She is an assistant professor at the Cooper Union in New York. In her book The Architecture of Closed Worlds, Kallipoliti investigates what outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common. From the space program to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living, Kallipoliti documents a disciplinary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consciousness.

Learn more on & before November 7: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

THE TERRAFORMING YEAR THREE THEMES: ASTROPOLITICS

If geopolitics is defined by the organization of terrestrial States, Astropolitics is and will be defined by the organization of Earth’s atmosphere, its orbital layers, and what lies just beyond. Today these are drawn by satellites, science and surveillance, but the political challenges of this century will be nothing if not planetary in scope and so that scope will itself be politicized. But how so? There is no Planetarity without Extraplanetarity: to truly grasp the figure of our astronomic perch is a Copernican trauma by which the ground is not grounding but a gravitational plane, and the night sky is not the the heavens but a time machine showing us light from years before the evolution of humans. For this, the archaic distinction between ‘down here’ and ‘up there’ also fractures. Terrestrial planetarity and extraterrestrial planetarity situate not a metaphysical inside/outside but a living astronomical continuum, and because this the contemporary political renunciation of “space” as a “fantasy” will do less to prevent it wholesale exploitation than it will do to guarantee it. Terraforming has always meant more than *terra firma*; it always adheres to exploration and composition of stacked and intermingling layers, from the sub-oceanic up to the Karman line and beyond.

Join our programme: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

Building Climate Knowledge Infrastructures

A Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Paul N. Edwards, spoke with Chiara Di Leone and Vlad Afanasiev about knowledge infrastructures and geoengineering, as well as policy and visual aspects of the landmark report on climate change.

Building Climate Knowledge Infrastructures An interview with Paul N. Edwards, Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

Excerpt: ‘The Revenge of the Real’ by Benjamin Bratton

In "The Revenge of the Real" (Verso Books, 2021), Benjamin Bratton argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on a new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention. Read an excerpt from "The Revenge of the Real" on Strelka Mag.

The book began as part of the “Revenge of the Real” project of The Terraforming think tank at the Strelka Institute in Moscow. Admissions to the last cycle of the program are open until November 7. https://theterraforming.strelka.com/

Excerpt: ‘The Revenge of the Real’ by Benjamin Bratton The future of politics after the pandemic.

From Postescapism to Metaescapism: Videogames as a Return to Reality

"The pandemic has revealed the role of gaming platforms as our non-human friends and companions that allow us to safeguard ourselves, our environments and networks as well as our familiar ways of life. This new aspect of videogaming is captured by the term ‘metaescapism.’ Just like metamodernism, which takes a detached perspective on the tension between modernism and postmodernism, metaescapism goes beyond both escapism and postescapism. In other words, metaescapism is a form of escapism that is intrinsically antiescapist."

Alexander Vetushinsky explores the new aspects and implications of videogaming beyond both escapism and postescapism. Via 'Voices (Towards Other Institutions)'

From Postescapism to Metaescapism: Videogames as a Return to Reality Alexander Vetushinksy on the new aspects and implications of videogaming beyond both escapism and postescapism.

THE TERRAFORMING FACULTY: CHRISTINA AGAPAKIS

Christina Agapakis is a synthetic biologist and science writer. She is the creative director of the biotechnology company Ginkgo Bioworks. In her work, Agapakis seeks out ways to blur the boundaries drawn between nature and technology, and between science and society. She practices a different kind of engineering that better takes into account the human and the cultural. As a scientist, she’s been working on enzymes involved in the production of biofuels, ecological design principles for synthetic biology, and the evolution of microbial communities in the soil. As an artist, she has mapped the microbial diversity of California, isolated halophilic bacteria from the Salton Sea, and made cheese from bacteria living on human skin.

until November 7: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

THE TERRAFORMING YEAR THREE THEMES: ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENTS

A viable Terraforming, supporting a rational and equitable organization of planetary life, depends on the design of microenvironments for specific purposes: dwelling, production, preservation, etc. The artificial ecology of the city represents a densely articulated pattern of all of these at once, extending from central cores to regional landscapes and circulation pathways. It usually does so, however, in ways that are far from being ecologically rational. Instead of giving shape to structures of expenditure, “Architecture” must now instead give form to systems of material organization, human and non-human, living and nonliving. The constitution of minimum viable (and maximum viable) environments draws on new vocabularies of programming, zoning, siting, habitation, mobilization, preservation, delimiting, of closed loops and open loops, first cities and final cities.

by November 7: https://theterraforming.strelka.com

The First Terraforming

"Terraforming is a bigger idea than climate response. One that basically takes responsibility for human agency in the Anthropocene, at the largest and most sophisticated scales at which it can be exercised. This includes taking responsibility for the fact that this agency cannot be ceded, because even if that were a good idea (which it isn’t) there’s no way to engineer a global, consensual ceding." —Venkatesh Rao on a technological sublime for the Anthropocene.

Learn more about The Terraforming design research program at Strelka and apply by November 7. https://theterraforming.strelka.com/

The First Terraforming Venkatesh Rao on a technological sublime for the Anthropocene.

Watch The Terraforming 2022 webinar with program co-director Nicolay Boyajiev, who will explain the structure of the program and the selection process. Join in to learn more about the experience of studying at Strelka and get answers to any questions regarding the application process.

The webinar starts at 7 pm (GMT+3), sign up to receive the link: https://stre.lk/yhcO

The Terraforming 2022: Reading List

From the history of quarantine to space expansionism, this reading list from The Terraforming team offers an insight into the themes that will be covered in the final year of the design research program.

The Terraforming 2022: Reading List Recommended literature from The Terraforming team.