The seminar on territorial strategies as part of Integrative Design with a focus on ‘extremes’ is an exploration of the pressing challenges of our time: climate and social crises. The seminar engages with a thought-provoking selection of texts from “Year Without a Winter”, “On the Emergence of an Ecological Class”, excerpts from “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Global Warming”, “Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene” and selected works by Rachel Armstrong, Saskia Sassen and other influential authors. “Year Without a Winter” by Dehlia Hannah takes participants on a speculative journey about the impact of extreme weather on our environment and encourages rethinking the role of architecture in addressing ecological challenges. In the memorandum “On the Emergence of an Ecological Class“, Bruno Latour argues for policies that prioritise the protection of our livelihoods. Excerpts from “The Uninhabitable Earth“ by David Wallace-Wells, a controversial book on the climate crisis, expose the consequences of inaction amidst the many challenges and encourage design considerations in terms of integrative design. “Staying with the Trouble” by Donna Haraway adds to the discourse with an excerpt of ecofeminist ethics that intertwines culture, nature and technology. Rachel Armstrong’s visionary texts address bioinspired architecture, synthetic biology and living technologies. Saskia Sassen’s contributions open up ways of understanding the complex dynamics between urban space, globalisation and social inequalities that can be crucial to understanding how to design just territorial strategies.

Methods:
Artistic exercises between the treatment of the seminar texts and own text blocks will form the basis for a small exhibition. This intersection of discourse and artistic expression offers an integrative perspective that aims to encourage participants to approach today’s challenges of shaping an environment from different perspectives.