In quest of code

Architects who apply their generative modelling and scripting skills for creating virtual and prototypical spaces through the usage of algorithms and bespoke coding are increasingly confronted with an application in the real material world. The article suggests computational design strategies and two different architectural and urban prototypes for an era in which intelligent material, robotic assistants, smart geometries, changing human habitat converge with demographic, cultural and natural earth data to govern a global rethinking of socio-architectural ecologies. Since the beginning of humankind our ecosystem planet earth has served as feeding ground and shelter. Civilisation and industrialisation have triggered a verification of territory, ownership, economic wealth and power. Henceforth ethical rules, societal regulation and intuitive values were partly overridden and replaced. Long-distant transport vehicles such as cargo ships and trains allowed for accelerating the mixing up of goods and technologies. Architects solved industrial and infrastructural problems with new ideas and emerging building types; shaping urban and peripheral environments. A great idea manifested through extensive exchange of cultures and knowledge - however, strangely enough climaxed in an ultimate exploitation of our natural resources. A situation we can hardly understand or handle. As a result we are facing a situation of re-scripting our human, urban and architectural ecological system. Thus the article touches upon this very shift starting in the 18th century traversing through the implementation of the Internet, to regulate our physical world and data-autobahns filled with informing bits and bytes. The question is, which questions to ask for the best solution we can offer.Architekten, die ihre generativen Modellierungs- und Skripting-Fähigkeiten zur Erstellung virtueller und prototypischer Räume durch den Einsatz von Algorithmen und maßgeschneiderter Codierung anwenden, werden zunehmend mit einer Anwendung in der realen materiellen Welt konfrontiert. Die Autorin präsentiert computergestützte Entwurfsstrategien an zwei architektonische und urbane Prototypen für eine Ära vor, in der intelligentes Material, Roboterassistenten und sich ändernder menschlicher Lebensraum mit demographischen, kulturellen und natürlichen Geodaten konvergieren, um ein globales Umdenken sozialarchitektonischer Ökologien zu steuern. Seit dem Beginn der Menschheit dient unser Ökosystem Planet Erde als Nahrungsgrund und Zufluchtsort. Zivilisation und Industrialisierung haben Decetten von Territorium, Eigentum, wirtschaftlichem Reichtum und Macht ausgelöst. Fortan wurden ethische Regeln, gesellschaftliche Regulierung und intuitive Werte teilweise außer Kraft gesetzt und ersetzt. Fernverkehrsfahrzeuge wie Frachtschiffe und Züge ermöglichten eine beschleunigte Vermischung von Gütern und Technologien. Architekten lösen industrielle und infrastrukturelle Probleme mit neuen Ideen und neuen Gebäudetypen; Gestaltung städtischer und peripherer Umgebungen. Eine großartige Idee, die sich in einem ausgedehnten Austausch von Kulturen und Wissen manifestierte, endete seltsamerweise in einer ultimativen Ausbeutung unserer natürlichen Ressourcen. Eine Situation, die wir kaum verstehen oder handhaben können. Als Ergebnis stehen wir vor der Frage, wie wir unser menschliches, urbanes und architektonisches Ökosystem umgestalten. Der Artikel greift diese Verschiebung auf

Earth as Humans’ Habitat: Global Climate Change and the Health of Populations

Human-induced climate change, with such rapid and continuing global-scale warming, is historically unprecedented and signifies that human pressures on Earth’s life-supporting natural systems now exceed the planet’s bio-geo-capacity. The risks from climate change to health and survival in populations are diverse, as are the social and political ramifications. Although attributing observed health changes in a population to the recent climatic change is difficult, a coherent pattern of climate- and weather-associated changes is now evident in many regions of the world. The risks impinge unevenly, especially on poorer and vulnerable regions, and are amplified by pre-existing high rates of climate-sensitive diseases and conditions. If, as now appears likely, the world warms by 3-5oC by 2100, the health consequences, directly and via massive social and economic disruption, will be severe. The health sector has an important message to convey, comparing the health risks and benefits of enlightened action to avert climate change and to achieve sustainable ways of living versus the self-interested or complacent inaction

Conflicts around Germany’s Energiewende: Discourse patterns of citizens’ initiatives

Especially since the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe (2011), Germany has expanded its renewably sourced energies. Nuclear power is to be phased out by 2022. What is central to federal policy is the expansion of wind-generated energy. Plans for new wind farms have, however, faced opposition. And the transportation of electricity from the windy north to the high-use south entails an expansion of the existing power grid, which also provokes conflict. The article scrutinises dominant patterns of discourse on these issues. Based on current discourse theory, the research sheds light on the argumentative power of citizens’ initiatives with respect to nature conservation, landscape, health and economics

Decolonizing energy transitions. The political economy of low-carbon infrastructure, justice, extraction and post-development in the Southeast of Mexico.

This thesis examines socioecological and onto-epistemic conflicts over low-carbon infrastructure in Yucatan, Mexico. Focusing on how energy systems and policies reconfigure landscapes and vice versa, it offers an expanded view of the broader social, political, historical, economic and environmental implications of such a transformation at different scales. It argues that the reconfiguration of landscapes is mediated by a capitalist drive towards the exploitation of so-called superabundance of 'renewable energy potential' where othered territorial relationships are made invisible or seen as ‘waste’ as they are tied-in to a particular epistemology of development. This thesis draws on the analysis of Critical Political Ecology on energy transitions, on the decolonial turn and the rise of extractivism in Latin America and on the work of political ecology and ontology, which has open broader questions about how certain notions such as ‘energy’, ‘transitions’ and ‘justice’ are understood. Drawing on these contributions, this thesis argues that geographers and critical scholars must pay closer attention to low-carbon infrastructure and the transition process, not only transcending the limited and simplified fossil fuel vs. renewable energy dichotomy that shapes the hegemonic energy transition, but in their analysis of how energy systems operate around Eurocentric and universal formulations of knowledge, power and being. The thesis seeks to make a contribution to how researchers, activists and policy-makers engage with the notion of energy justice arguing for a pluriversal and relational understanding of energy and of the process of transforming energy systems

Remaking the material fabric of the city: 'Alternative' low carbon spaces of transformation or continuity?

©.This article is about re-making the material fabric of the city and the role that space plays in this. There are many ways of understanding the remaking of the city, including a range of often diverse 'alternative' initiatives which are enacted by neighbourhood, voluntary and civil society groups. We address the construction of 'alternative' urban low carbon spaces and whether these result in transformation of or continuity with dominant ways of thinking about remaking the city. Drawing on examples in Greater Manchester, UK, the article argues that, often despite the intention to promote forms of localist values and strategies as alternatives to dominant accounts of remaking the city, the hand of dominant and particularly state interests is critical in shaping 'alternative' spaces and strategies. This tension - between dominant and alternative - is illustrated through a five-fold typology of the role of space in alternative strategies of remaking the city