FEDERICA SOFIA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ Thank you both for meeting today. I wanted to focus on the shared ground between your reciprocal disciplines, and how to think about design in relation to something as seemingly scientific as weather and climate. Christina, perhaps we can start with your practice, which involves the production of knowledge infrastructures related to both climate and neuro ecologies. How does this kind of knowledge take shape, and what does it mean to engage in this research from the perspective of an architect?

CHRISTINA LEIGH GEROS Well, since I was trained as an architect, drawing is the first tool that I reach for as a way of thinking through something, of exploring a different kind of space or a new set of relations. In practice, architects use drawings to imagine possibilities, to give instruction and to communicate vision, but in this act, we are also producing knowledge and telling stories. However, drawings lend themselves to multiple interpretations and misinterpretations. So, in my own practice, I often use drawing as a form of investigation and not the only means of communication; depending on the story and who I might want to engage in the telling, I may employ photography, or film, or writing to give form to weather in a way that might start a different conversation.

As a topic, the ubiquity of weather brings it into everyday conversation—we can always speak about the weather that surrounds us. However, the scientific explanations of how weather systems connect one disparate geography to another tend to be too dense for most of us to meaningfully engage. Years of field work in different climates around the globe has taught me that people are deeply rooted in the atmospheres in which they reside; and there are so many different ways of relating to the meteorological materials of landscape. For instance, in Indonesia — a nation comprising some 18,000 islands that stretch out along the equator and are bound up in two different monsoon systems — distinctions between land and water change dramatically with the seasons, as does one’s ability to move between islands. This influences the ways in which property boundaries are realized (lived, not legally registered) and the ways in which familial ties are formed and cared for over decades. The winds, the heat, the rain create dramatic landscapes and lifeworlds throughout the year; yet, when asked about the weather, it is a story of family and ancestral connection that unfolds.

KOOZ And in terms of words and representation, how much do you distance your own language from scientific jargon, as it were — both the technical and visual jargon through which weather is generally discussed? Do you make it a point to borrow some terminology or means of visual notations or do you develop your own vocabulary?

CLG I try not to depart too far; if the scientific terminology communicates well, I use it. I think there is something about the act of normalizing this language that is an important step in making weather systems and their interconnections more accessible. I do try to add material and/or spatial context that might help make ground terms that are more difficult to visualize.

KOOZ Julia, the project you presented at the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial — titled ‘Weather is Nice, Let’s Panic!’ — deploys various media to discuss weather modification technologies, from the physical installation to film and publication. What drew you to focus on weather modification technologies in the Soviet Union and Georgia, and how did you decide to share this narrative at TAB?

JULIA OBLEITNERWell, firstly I should say that we worked in a group. We all come from different backgrounds and for us, the topic extends — as it does for Christina — to much broader aspects. It's not just about the local experiments and programmes in Georgia, but we see our work as part of a larger global narrative, of humanity’s attempt to control and reshape the environment through technology. Our focus towards weather modification programmes started years ago; for me, it was when I was working in California, with fellow architect and artist Helvijs Savickis. The interest grew from the observation of natural ecosystems and infrastructures; that took us deeper into research around weather modification and eventually, we came across the former Soviet Union's extensive Weather Modification Programme. In the case of Georgia, these experiments were not just about weather control for agricultural or industrial purposes, but also embedded with a kind of ideological belief around mastering nature and shaping society through science and technology — this programme was of course initiated during the Soviet era.

In the context of the recent Tbilisi Architecture Biennial — titled Correct Mistakes — this project stood out for us, as an interplay between this effort to control space within the Soviet Union, and then again later, when the programme underwent a militarised revival in 2015. It’s interesting that such efforts were not stopped due to concerns about environmental impact. They only stopped following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties — the abandonment of the programme, albeit temporary, was very much a political consequence. In developing ‘Weather is Nice, Let’s Panic!’, we stumbled through these ideas, as we had already worked on and knew something about ongoing research around weather control, so we tried to expand our knowledge. We actually do see it as a global issue.

KOOZ You mentioned that the Soviet weather modification programme stopped with the fall of the Soviet Union, then started again in 2015 under a military guise. How are weather modification technologies being deployed now? Have there been any visible effects or counter-effects from the enactment of these technologies?

JOYes. These programmes are now run through the Ministry of Defense, which we found quite interesting. It hints at the military agenda of something against which we have to defend ourselves; we must defend ourselves from the weather, to protect ourselves. This is a notion we find especially interesting as architects, because for us, there was always this big question in our mind: namely, if we have the ability to modify the weather according to our specific needs — if we could really change the levels of rainfall and control extremes of climate — would we actually need architecture? If so, then to what extent — what kind of spaces would we need? Then too, if we can influence our environment, how would we really prefer to have it?

KOOZ It’s certainly a provocation: if we can control the weather, do we need architecture? But it’s my understanding that our understanding and capacity for weather modification is still at a very superficial level. We don't know what the repercussions are — and it seems that from our anthropocentric perspective, being able to actually control something at that scale is still out of our scope — thankfully, or so I believe. Christina, does this link to your research into the trajectories of storms and our attempts to understand them?

CLGIt’s really impossible to separate the development of modern meteorology from national efforts to expand trade systems and military defense at a global scale. Our first weather maps are those of the ‘trade winds’ (17th century); while these maps document the wind and sea currents that circumnavigate the globe, they were deemed worthy of documentation because they held value as an economic infrastructure. You could say that as a value metric, a thing’s ‘usefulness’ — or relevancy to man — remains the most significant registration of that thing in space (according to man, of course).

As a matter of national security (and individual safety, as well), we have systems in place to observe and document perceived risks as they are identified in proximal relation to us. Mapping storms, for instance, uses the same cartographic techniques that a military might use to map enemy movements: a series of points generated by geolocated and time marked ‘sightings’, connected by a line indicating the direction of travel. The similarity in cartographic depiction makes sense; storms have always been considered as moving and evolving threats.

A lot can be said in a name as well. For instance — storms, tornados, hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons — all are registered as ‘tracks’. It’s the language of the hunt, of predator and prey. I was really drawn to the fact that the weather observatory in Georgia — the site of Weather is Nice, Let’s Panic! at TAB — is now known as the Hydrometeorological Centre, rather than simply a meteorological observatory. I think this is quite telling. The term hydrometeorology places that observation center within the context of asset management or resource allocation; a directive for thinking about weather as water. It's not a place where we observe the atmosphere and figure out what may or may not be coming towards us; this is where we're going to deal with water in its various forms, in liquid states and vapour states, as it circulates towards us, through us and around us. It is also not uncommon for national stations of weather observation to be called National Observatories — places of observation for national defense. Weather has long been seen as both an adversary and an asset.

KOOZ That fits with a certain agenda; if weather is an adversary, the idea is to find ways to control, stabilise or even harness it — which is theoretically where weather modification programmes would come in. Yet it seems wrong to think about complex systems in such binary terms as unstable or stable. Is there a way beyond this binary simplification?

CLG I think that in many places around the world, weather is not really seen through this binary. We understand ourselves as part of weather systems, even if we don't give a spoken language to that understanding. Especially in places that are less urbanized, where you're much closer to nature, there’s an understanding of weather as a part of your everyday life rather than some invading enemy. People have a friendlier relationship with it, in contexts that require more agility. When monitoring and communicating about weather is done by the government and weather is treated like a series of events, the fact that the state has a vested interest in weather as a material commodity is made apparent by the judgements of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that the monitoring bodies apply to the weather. Once defined in this way, these vested parties start to ask certain questions: Can we control it? Can we move it here? Can we deal with it on this day and not that day? This is an increasingly popular way of thinking about weather — as a malleable media that we can choose to have or not have. But while this may be happening at the state level, it hasn’t been my experience that everyday people think the weather is something that should and can be modified to fit our individual preferences.

KOOZ A cloud doesn't know a border. But clouds do carry an impact and therefore their engineering has consequences. In your research, Christina, you show how the weather in South East Asia reverberates across North America and the northern Eurasian region. It is clear that weather is highly political; in terms of weather modification, who makes the rules for what one can do or not do?

CLGWeather modification is actually used all the time, in a lot of places that we might find surprising. I think it's broadly understood that the large geopolitical players — the US, Russia, China — they're engaging in weather modification because they have the money and the power to do so. But actually, very small countries are also engaging in weather technologies — particularly in cloud seeding, for agricultural purposes. Although small in size, Israel’s committed use of cloud seeding experiments (since the 1960s) to increase freshwater supplies in the Sea of Galilee could even be credited as one of the most significant contributors to increased knowledge in the field.

The truth is, weather modification, at the scale of cloud seeding (which is more or less the limit of technological experimentation at the moment) is not regulated. If you have access to the technology, it is yours to use — whether you are a single farmer or a nation state. Regulation, however, is not the only barrier (or non-barrier) to use. Recently, I was in Greece, meeting with a tiny drought-ridden municipality which has had access to cloud seeding technology for several years. Although they are desperately in need of rainfall, they have never employed this technology, because the population (including the resident politicians) are terrified of creating rainfall that is bigger, or more intense, than they can handle. Having been traumatized by catastrophic floods in recent years, no local politician is willing to take on the risk of new (to them) technology. And, in my opinion, this is not wrong. While cloud seeding is not new tech, it is also not precise. So, sometimes local experience and knowledge performs as the only ‘check’ on the use of these systems.

Without a framework for use, cloud seeding has been (experimentally) used for a variety of purposes — to uphold construction schedules, maintain favorable weather for events, fight wildfires — and many of these experiments have actually been unsuccessful. While the more positive test cases are the ones that get attention, it is the failed studies that need to be considered when setting regulations and use parameters. We can put a lot of things in the sky, but we really have no say in what the winds and clouds do with it.

KOOZ Are there legal frameworks — at an international or even national level — to mitigate the levels of cloud seeding or the extent to which one can modify the weather? Have we developed equivalent environmental impact assessments before engaging with these technologies? Julia, were you able to find this while doing research in Tbilisi?

JOI'm not an expert, but as far as I know, militarised weather modification attempts were developed as strategic weapons, especially during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Out of that came the Environmental Modification Convention in 1977, which was a major step towards addressing the potential misuse of weather modification techniques. Of course at a global level, questions remain as to how this is tackled politically; also how to deal with non-militarised weather modification programmes and the serious impacts they incur on other nations, shifting rainfall patterns and affecting the ecosystem.

KOOZ Christina, can you tell us about any new political treaties, decisions or dreams in this direction?

CLGWell, there really aren't any. Legal frameworks and policy development relative to weather modification hasn’t really evolved since the 1970s — it’s the same conversation. There is a general understanding that if you cloud seed, or do something to affect the weather in one country, and that affects the weather in another country, then that second country can take some sort of legal action. However, that legal action requires a functioning international court that has the ability to enforce the rule of law; but this is not what we have. Such cases could be taken to the international court, argued, and won; but in reality, very little could be done to the offending party — it’s a public slap on the wrist.

Moving from weather modification to geoengineering, the need to develop and agree on globally recognized treaties for the use of these technologies becomes even more serious; but the urgency, indeterminacy, and reality of the climate crisis seems to do little more than hold us in a stalemate. No one knows what to do or how to legislate this technology,— it's complete paralysis. In my opinion, one of the reasons for this stalemate around weather modification is the universal awareness that no state is to be spared and each one may need this technology for their own use — so they don't want to impose limitations they may regret in a few years.

JOThat’s true; we have seen that with the US, with the former Soviet Union and China. I guess there is simply no interest right now to work on a global treaty.

CLGExactly. It's really crazy. A previously published piece for KoozArch discussed China's cloud seeding along the edge of the Tibetan Plateau — and raises concerns or questions about cloud ‘stealing’, pulling across the border from India into Chinese territory. In fact, as the clouds reach the India/China border, they have already traversed the continent and are not preparing for a u-turn. The seeding chambers are not significantly shifting the trajectory of the clouds, but where they deposit moisture. They're shifting where water enters the earth’s surface water system, pulling the clouds past ten of the largest and most significant rivers in the world and onto the delicate permafrost ecology of the Plateau before they drop their moisture. Meteorology, however, is complex and knowledge in the field is developing every day. So, while data may clearly show spatial shifts in the distribution of rainfall, proving the cause or the various potential consequences of these shifts can be extremely difficult. Should we blame increased levels of permafrost melt, caused by the increased rainfall on the Plateau, to extreme flooding or cycles of drought across Laos or Myanmar or Vietnam or Pakistan? It’s too difficult to say; there are so many interwoven factors. But, should we allow the ambiguity between cause and effect to green light experiments within the earth system?

Technology is developed to be used. So, decades of development in weather modification technologies will be put to use — particularly as weather systems and climate further destabilize. As these technologies are further developed and employed, and the legal frameworks needed to ensure their safe(er) use becomes a reality (hopefully), drawing-out an understanding and picture of weather as an architectural system can be a useful tool in recognizing the infinite connections between one current and another — whether traversing air, land, or sea.

KOOZ As you mentioned, as individuals we have a more holistic, experiential connection to the weather, but when nation-states come into play, the stakes are geopolitical, economic, even cataclysmic. This would suggest that there’s a real need to bring awareness to a wider population — without this, we cannot create public pressure. To what extent is your work concerned with making the public aware of such technologies, and what does it mean to actually think about the weather as this dimensional system?

JOTo bring it into connection with space: architecture is something very physical, creating enclosures, while weather is something very hard to grasp. It’s not easy to tackle this topic, to engage the public with something so airy and unstable. So we decided to use different media, because perhaps one is not enough for this topic: we work with text, film and physical installations to address and prompt visitors to engage with it. With the installation, we had an idea of creating a rudimentary shelter with no roof, made of agricultural products and covered with anti hail nets — which hint at something ominous, from which one would need even a partial protection. We tried to suggest a space that plays with the dynamics of a changing environment. People who experience the installation on site can discuss their nuanced interactions. We also created a film work that incorporates scenes from Georgia's national archives to explore what we can learn from the past.

KOOZ As your site at Tbilisi was within a former meteorological station, the installation had an instant resonance with the history of the space where the visitor physically stands. Christina, you began by talking about literature and representation. In terms of creating this knowledge production, does your practice still operate between those mediums — what can we expect in the new year?

CLGOh, good question. Firstly, I wish I had seen the installation at TAB; it sounds amazing! I think it’s like every other step in growing public awareness and adding to a conversation about the environment, in considering what our role within the environment is and what it might need to be. Educating the general public takes time; I think it takes every kind of media and different kinds of stories, written and told in many ways, to just allow different entry points into the topic. I hope that more people seriously engage in conversations about weather modification and what it means to play in this realm, because as the climate crisis deepens, there's an increased reliance, or faith, on the savior-capacity of technology. Weather modification is one of the most easily graspable technologies that people can imagine — so how do we prevent an explosion of irresponsible usage? This genuinely concerns me. If one little municipality is seeding clouds to nourish their crops, it won't necessarily be the end of the world — but if everyone is doing it, we have a big problem. We have to start talking about it in meaningful terms, across different media — this is not about how technology will save us, but maybe that we shouldn't rely on technology; we should actually rethink how we manage systems.

KOOZ Architects are not going to save the day, that’s clear — but thank you both for sharing your work, and for creating those moments of exchange within academic and cultural institutions, through publications and various platforms. It's really important. Thank you.

Bios

Christina Leigh Geros is an architect, landscape architect and urban designer who specialises in conducting design-led research that critically engages the production of knowledge infrastructures related to climate- and neuro-ecologies. Christina is a Koozarch columnist, as author of The Architecture of Weather. Currently, she teaches on the MA/MLA Landscape Architecture programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture and on the MA Environmental Architecture programme at the Royal College of Art. Christina received both a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design and a Masters of Landscape Architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (2015) and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee (2005). As a Fulbright National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow and a Research Fellow for Monsoon Assemblages, her work has focused on methods of reading and modes of engagement within the weather-worlds of South and Southeast Asia.

Julia Obleitner works in collaborations across spatial, image and text practices, at the intersection of art and architecture. She co-founded dasBAU and is currently a lecturer at the Institute for Experimental Architecture at the University of Innsbruck. Her work has received several awards and grants, including the Pfann Ohmann Prize, the Austrian Cultural Ministry’s Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky Grant, the MAK Schindler Scholarship Los Angeles amongst others.

Weather is Nice, Let’s Panic! is a three-part project examining our relationships with nature through the lens of hidden control infrastructures; it questions our attempts to control something as ephemeral as the weather. It was produced for the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2024 and its authors are Julia Obleitner, Helvijs Savickis, Jan Meusburger and Anna Kintsurashvili.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.