Event
J. Irwin Miller Symposium
World Ecologies in Formation
Engaging contemporary framings of our climate and economic crises, World Ecologies in Formation investigates the social and environmental dialectics that have given rise to both historical and emerging twenty-first-century built cultures, including material ecologies, building technologies, energy regimes, landscapes, waterscapes, atmospheres, labor systems, and data infrastructures. Departing from a dual framing of human and non-human systems as discrete processes, the symposium investigates the complex internalization and externalization of socioecological transformations within contemporary built ecologies as active constituents in shaping each other.
By framing “world-ecology” as a system in formation, the symposium engages how transdisciplinary and cross-cultural socioecological concepts are deconstructing, enriching and reconstituting the fundamentals of future design. We will commit to an investigation of emerging and novel relational models, and how they might alter power dynamics in the shaping of environments. The three-day event brings together an interdisciplinary group of anthropologists, architects, artists, scientists, activists, historians, economists, engineers, philosophers, and scientists to investigate how historical, contemporary and emerging world ecological paradigms continue to shape existing built ecosystems and material artefacts.
Symposium Schedule
Thursday, October 29
10:00 a.m., Yale CEA
Biogenic Material Value Chains, Just Labor, and Climate Adaptation: Planetary Heutogogies in West African Afrotropics
Telesilla Bristogianni, Glenn DeRoche, Mamadou Dia, Issa Diabaté, Ernest Dione, Nebyu Haile, Nzinga Mboup, Ibrahim Niang, Faidra Oikonomopoulou, Igazeuma Okoroba, John Oschendorf, Liz Ricketts, and Samuel Siaw
2:00 p.m., Yale CEA
Built Ecologies and Information Flows: International Drought Resilience Observatory
Anthony Acciavatti, Flavio de Andrade Silva, Dana Cupkova, Jefferson Ellinger, Carla Leitao, Peter Osborne, Anthony Titus, Andrea Toreti, and Daniel Tsegai
6:00 p.m., Hastings Hall
Keynote: World Ecologies in Formation
Anna Dyson and Mae-ling Lokko
Friday, October 30
9:00 a.m., Hastings Hall
Introduction
Dean Deborah Berke
9:15 a.m., Hastings Hall
Metabolic Invention and the Synthetic Commons
Ron Eglash, Ariane Harrison, Lydia Kallipoliti, Kiel Moe, and Mette Ramsgaard
11:15 a.m., Hastings Hall
Toward New Design Paradigms for Biodiversity
Keller Easterling, Jane Mah Hutton, Fernando La Posse, Paul Lewis, Peter Osborne, and Katie Ulrich
2:00 p.m., Hastings Hall
Toward New Networks for Reading, Making, and Co-Evolving World Ecologies
Laurens Bekemans, Christian Benimana, Issa Diabaté, Ana María Durán Calisto, and Elihu Rubin
Saturday, October 31
9:00 a.m.
The Listening Room: A Collective Reflection Session
Mouad Nadzi, Hind Wildman, and Mustapha Zaouini
World Ecologies in Formation is supported in part by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund at the Yale MacMillan Center, the J. Irwin Miller Endowment at the Yale School of Architecture, and the re:arc Institute.