FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ Thank you for coming together, following the opening of The Sixth Sphere at Rice University. Brittany, maybe we can start at the beginning. Reading the open-access publication accompanying the exhibition, I was interested in this idea of unruly spheres. In relation to what has been defined as the sixth sphere, can you talk about the technosphere — and also what you define as the unruly?

BRITTANY UTTINGThe conceptual model of the sphere is both provocative and problematic. We’re familiar with the idea of the natural world that is neatly organised into five spheres: hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and cryosphere. While this system is a legacy of the ways that scientific knowledge has traditionally been produced and partitioned, it also implicitly creates an idea of the planet as a complete or stable model in which each sphere operates according to its function and niche. In fact, the spheres sustain a highly dynamic, unruly, and lively set of interactions. They are constantly remaking and changing our climates and material worlds.

I was struck by this idea of the unruliness of the natural world because it's in direct opposition to the way that we have come to understand and inhabit the technosphere — which, as Peter K Haff argues, is a planetary infrastructure of extraction. As opposed to the natural spheres, which are constantly interacting, metabolizing, and recycling materials, the technosphere is ruled by a singular logic: expand, consume, and remake the world into a ruled and ordered system — transforming it into an assembly line of industrial production with ever-growing frontiers of material extraction. This reworking of the world is what’s causing profound climate breakdown: disrupting planetary cycles of exchange and renewal. Architecture is part of this ordering system, reinforcing habits and material desires that exhaust the planet’s capacity to renew itself.

KOOZ It's quite a far reaching prompt. You talk about architecture as this ordering mechanism, but on the other hand, doesn’t the exhibition position itself as challenging that capacity; rather looking at it as a lens through which one can actually complicate, reorient and resist this prevailing logic?

BUFundamentally, I think that the projects in the exhibition each finds ways to reveal, unravel, and resist the technosphere’s logic, both in their designs as well as in the ways that they leverage representation to imagine alternative points of view, forms of life, and future worlds. In this sense, the contributors are highly critical of implementing top-down technological “solutions” to climate breakdown. Instead, their contributions are specific and situated. They work from the ground-up. The projects acknowledge that the Anthropocene — that is, the experience of climate loss, the harm, the precarity — is not a uniform or universal experience. It is highly uneven; it affects bodies, communities, and landscapes in different ways and at different time scales. They are highly specific, highly situated, but at the same time, they open up conversations about larger planetary issues. In fact, several of the projects make visible the social and environmental violences of so-called solutions, from critiques of the extractivism of green capitalism to the dangers of geoengineering.

KOOZ Rather than redefining scales — beyond small, medium, large, for instance — you're taking a transcalar approach, through the molecular, the machinic and the metabolic. How do these scales operate, both individually, but also as intertwined entities?

BUWhen we use categories like small, medium, and large, we have a tendency to relate the agency of design to the size of a building. This bracketing of scales creates biases and blind spots that makes it difficult for us to understand how something small — such as, let's say, the specification of a finish material or a detail in an assembly — has vast effects. These seemingly simple choices in design mobilise vast networks of labour and capital. These choices can rework the land through the extraction of materials and change the atmosphere through the use of fuel. At the same time, something as seemingly vast and impersonal as infrastructure — such as our drinking water systems, food supply chains, or electrical grids — has an incredibly intimate effect on our bodies, on our health, and the way we live.

KOOZ These three imaginaries are all submitted on pen and paper, so to speak, with the ambition of going back to also evaluating and exploring the drawing as the tool, through which we can construct and speculate on these worlds. Turning to Neyran, Mireia and Margarita, what role does drawing hold within your various practices?

MIREIA LUZÁRRAGAThe conversation is very interesting. For us, drawing is crucial — not only in our practice, but also in our academic work. The crisis that we are living through in the Anthropocene era — the different crises derived from climate change and the way modernism has been operating in this extractive way — is also a crisis of representation. The traditional architectural drawing, because of the scale constraints, and the representational inheritance that we have, is not able to unveil all the power structures that operate in the architectural discipline. All complex sets of layers —political, ecological and social — are the context in which architecture operates, from the molecular to the planetary, from our site to the places where our materials were extracted or our waste ends up. That is something that we try to work with in the office.

In the academy, one of the exercises we ask our students to do is what we call the ‘metabolic section’. From a particular architectural detail, they have to go into the molecular scale, but also the planetary scale of impact; you have to talk about the materials, where do they come from, what relationships of operations, power, hegemonies, or controversies lie around that? We think that this issue that Brittany was explaining, about how to represent this multiscalar condition of architecture is really necessary. And I think it was super successful in the exhibition.

In our work, we also use representation as a means of restaging. Unlike the common tendency in architecture to create sci-fi drawings when addressing planetary crises, restaging involves constructing uncanny worlds that illustrate an unfamiliar realism. In these worlds, everything appears real, but there is also something slightly off. On the one hand, it presents a rather banal scene with a model on a table. On the other hand, the orange sky signifies a burning planet, alluding to the climate emergency. The garment on a hanger has gloves and a mask attached to its body, due to environmental toxicity. A thick air filter is present in the room, along with various clues and details that help get a sense of this new world. As the project's title, Eaarthly Ever After, suggests, this is a different Earth now, not the one we know.

On the table, we see drawings that reflect emerging architectural sensibilities, rituals, and protocols, which illustrate new norms in architectural practice and emphasize non-extractive economies of production, care, and stewardship. The main idea is that this new Eaarth requires new forms of practice in architecture. So, the project is inherently about architectural practice, and we chose to tackle this through the most mundane spatial phenomenon, which is the office or the space within which we produce.

One final note about the role of representation in our work is the importance of considering the idea of enchantment. In the context of the climate crisis, as we discuss new ways of inhabiting, practicing, and resisting in this damaged planet and promote sufficiency instead of unlimited growth, we need to think about how to collectivize new pleasures and sources of enchantment. How can design inspire these imaginaries rather than simply resorting to the narratives of sacrifice and despair? How do we foster new imaginations, delights, and curiosities while maintaining a critical and resistant stance?

To imagine alternative futures, we need to tell other stories with architecture to make those futures sensible and, hopefully, someday possible.

BUOne of the things I find powerful about your drawing is that the juxtaposition of the architectural office space against the wildfire in the window demonstrates that climate catastrophe is not an exceptional event. While the logic of the technosphere is part of longer histories of extraction, it is also embedded in the banal and everyday realities of how we make things, consume things, and simplify natural systems. And I think that's what's so radical about the works in this exhibition: they reveal both the familiarity and uncanniness of climate breakdown.

KOOZ Margarita, it would be great to hear about world making from your perspective, looking at a very vast territory. Tell us about your approach to drawing, within your practice.

MARGARITA JOVERIn terms of drawing, I really like this phrase that Mireia mentioned, about a crisis of representation. As far as I understand it, representation is the consequence of a world view and, of course, re-staging a new world view aims to have a direct correspondence in drawing. I think it's really important; certainly we have a loss of biodiversity in drawing. I often like to make the correspondence with the digital tools to draw. For instance, the game of chess is not a digital tool, but chess has certain rules embedded that allow some things to happen and others not to happen. The same thing happens with Grasshopper or Rhino or AutoCAD, right? Every drawing programme has embedded rules that define what is, what can be done and what cannot be done.

With the language, there are also some constraints; some things can be expressed much better in some languages than others. So every model or representation, whether it's verbal or made by hand — maybe your hand is like the most flexible, but whether by hand or digitally — has some impossibilities and possibilities. Acknowledging that the only way to avoid collapse, to try to understand as much as possible, is to open up to different modes of representation and to speak in different languages, much as we draw differently with different constraints.

This is the same thing that has happened with the biodiversity of rice. Not Rice University, Brittany, but rice in terms of the seed or the grain species that we've lost. To increase productivity in rice, we have selected certain types of grain and mass produced these, and we have lost biodiversity as a result. The same thing has happened since the Renaissance, with the establishment of perspective and then the classification of types of drawings, and the way we use them in schools of architecture. That’s a regimented method; that also cuts up the ways of thinking. In that sense, opening up different ways is, for me, the number one priority. That’s not to say that our way of doing things is one more to add to the collection. I think that the more students are exposed to ways of drawing, the better chance that different ways of thinking can emerge.

There's also the question of resolution. I think it's clear that when we talk about construction drawings, they have a high resolution in some aspects of reality, but really low resolution in others. Construction drawings have high resolution in materials, in colours, maybe price too, especially if you add programmes like Revit and so on. But they have a really low resolution in terms of the urban role, for example. With conceptual frameworks and drawings, it’s the opposite: high resolution in some fields, but really low resolution in others. The types of drawing and their resolution are two aspects that one could think about for a long time. And I think it's important to know that there is no one thing, but rather different assemblies or different ways of approaching drawing that take a position.

In our case, our position in relation to the exhibition, was that of an optimistic view in this world that is cataclysmic. It positions itself on the idea of foodscapes and how every recipe in the world is mobilising resources globally; that in turn has a huge impact on the resources of the planet. We took the approach that we can do anything in a watershed. We took the example of the Ter River region in Girona and proposed a recipe, such that everything could feasibly be produced in a circular fashion. In a way it provides insight into streams that go back to pre-industrial times and knowing that there are lessons to be learned there in the way the food systems have evolved. So that is our drawing: a multi scalar, multi sensorial, multi spatial approach to questions about foodscapes. We did through collage and line work, across several panels; besides the proposal, we describe the integration of infrastructure — the idea that you can safely reintegrate waste back into the same region that provides food for everyone. The aim of the circularity in the region was the idea we tried to draw out in our contribution.

KOOZ It is extremely relevant, thinking about it as a project which is extremely rooted within a context exposed to extreme climate catastrophe, especially looking towards a post carbon future. What does that mean within a California landscape, what has happened in the last four years, and how can we move on from here? And where do we position ourselves as architects — is there space for that?

NT We recently started a new research and design project focused on hempcrete construction. This allowed us to direct our critical perspective toward material practices and construction by prioritizing plant-based materials over those derived from fossil fuels. It provided an opportunity to challenge ourselves in addressing the materials of the carbon economy and its agroecological aspects in California.

As I mentioned, we are keenly interested in representational and construction-based assemblies. This new project aims to foster fresh political and aesthetic sensibilities within our office regarding construction in light of the climate emergency. By imagining new construction protocols, supply chains, and agroecological stewardship around hempcrete construction, the project alludes to the broader conversations regarding decarbonized climate futures and non-extractive practices that architecture must embrace. Instead of cheap, imported architectural materials that rely on transnational supply chains and conceal various forms of extractive labor practices, the project imagines a shift towards bio-based construction materials for new and reuse projects, in which architects participate in the coalition of new alliances between multiple stakeholders.

Through this project, we have connected with many local communities in California, gaining valuable insights on the necessary forms of activism advocating for essential changes across various fronts, including building code legislation for bio-based materials. So, drawing the orange sky has been an initial provocation for research into other ways of practicing in our office.

MJMaybe I can try and link the reality of the wildfires in California in relation to the food system. Firstly, the globalisation of food systems in the US has definitely affected that part of the California region; it has been dangerously over-exploited, leaving the landscape so vulnerable in many ways. Another issue is large scale suburbanisation and the way we inhabit the territory, which is so unbalanced beyond the resources of that place. The question of ways of inhabiting of course involves the architectural object and whether its material assembly is one type or another; beyond that, there is also the lifestyles of those who inhabit this or this box or city, reaching beyond the capacity of the place. The multi scalar take, in many ways, is architecture responding to its own tools, perhaps saying that our tools are not enough — there are other tools that need to be activated.

So you move from designer to activist, not only organising one’s own position, but trying to affect things through politics. There are several roles that designers can take — a diaspora, or a constellation of roles — and we can see that in younger generations, as it emerges out of necessity. The field is too narrow in its old definitions and has to respond to the big questions. I think that constellation is one aspect of contemporary practice that is, in a way, its own redefinition: it is kaleidoscopic in its roles and scales.

KOOZ It goes back to this idea of not an individual catastrophe, but catastrophes which are rooted in a much wider temporal and geographical sphere. Margarita mentioned emerging generations and how today there is — in Italian is a guerrillati — so much passion in the discipline, in challenging its role and potential. What does it mean to stage an exhibition like this within the context of a university? Brittany, what were your ambitions in doing so?

BUOne of the motivations for the exhibition was imagining how it could also be used as a teaching tool — an extension of the classroom, the studio, and the discourse here at Rice. In the context of a school, it’s also particularly meaningful that the contributors use drawing and representation to completely reimagine what architecture can be. The exhibition shows that design has a capacity, not just to solve problems, but to make visible possible climate futures. I think that the work also challenges the disciplinary enclosure of architecture. The projects foreground design, but they also demonstrate that when we work on questions of the environment, it is always part of larger political and social imaginaries; what's at stake is not only architecture serving the human subject, but that the human is necessarily entangled with the more-than-human, and that the planetary is a shared condition. I'm so grateful to all of the contributors for the work that they shared.

KOOZ Let’s end with this gratitude; thank you all so much. It's such a pleasure to be able to share these conversations with all of you.

Bios

Margarita Jover co-founded the internationally awarded firm aldayjover architecture and landscape together with Iñaki Alday in 1996, in Barcelona, Spain. She has taught at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the University of Navarra, the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia and the University of Virginia. Jover is co-author of the book Ecologies of Prosperity (ORO Editors, 2018) and The Water Park (ACTAR, 2008). Across academic research and in practice, Jover promotes a broader understanding of architecture that aims to mitigate and reverse socioecological crises.

Mireia Luzárraga is Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP, and founder and principal of TAKK Architecture, a research-driven design office based in Barcelona and New York. She has previously held positions at University of Tokyo (2024), at Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Barcelona (2018-2022). Her work focuses on investigating how design can catalyze egalitarian societies through the incorporation of feminism, queer ecologies, and posthuman studies into spatial practices.

Neyran Turan is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of California-Berkeley and a founding partner at NEMESTUDIO. Turan's work draws on alternative forms of planetary imagination within architecture and their capacity to prompt new aesthetic and political lines of inquiry for the design disciplines. Her most recent book Architecture as Measure (Actar Publishers, 2020) elaborates on the cultural and disciplinary potentials of a new architectural planetary imagination.

Brittany Utting is an assistant professor of architecture at Rice University and cofounder of the research and design collaborative HOME-OFFICE. Her work examines the relationship between architecture, collective life, and environmental care. She is the editor of the book Architectures of Care: From the Intimate to the Common (Routledge, 2023), and guest editor of Log 60: The Sixth Sphere (Winter/Spring 2024) with Albert Pope.

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.