Earthbound

International Lecture Series

International Lecture Series 2019/20
School of Architecture
Royal College of Art
Role: Invited Curator

Upcoming Events at RCA

Posters for the first three sessions of the Earthbound Lecture Series (Design by ARD)

The theme of the 2019/20 International Lecture Series is the planetary crisis in which we live. As architects, designers, and workers of the built environment at large, we have our share of responsibility to act upon this crisis in a constructive manner. Architecture is traversed by a rising awareness that the status quo is not enough. While the current principles and standards of sustainability have failed to rise to the challenge we all face, the most clamorous sign of this failure is the radically uneven distribution of its present and future effects. There is no way around the problem: we must rethink what it means to design from an engaged ecological perspective today.

The School of Architecture is inviting ten guest speakers to provoke our collective imagination around the intersections of design and ecology. Weaving together the social and physical, material and cultural, local and global characters of our environmental crisis, the lecture series is conceived as a non-linear journey through the present impasses, and possible futures, of our shared relationship to the planet.