Architecture (MA)
ADS7: Something in the Air – Politics of the Atmosphere
About
As the domain where different vectors of the current climate crisis meet and interact, and where conflicts around its regulation are emerging, the atmosphere also produces multiple localities where these transformations can be observed and understood – and sites of mediation can be imagined. Far from being understood in all of its complexity, the atmosphere continues to elude our ability to model its dynamics or to compute future scenarios.
In an attempt to question and drift from the current understanding of planetary-scale ecosystems, ADS7 used transdisciplinary methods utilised in architecture, landscape architecture and geography, in order to uncover, document, and assemble the many histories of the atmosphere, beginning with a focused case study, the Sky River project – a recent plan by the Chinese government to use weather modification on the Tibetan Plateau to address water scarcity in its northwestern regions.
This case study helped in the development of a series of themes and visualisation methodologies, applied throughout the world to other sites – other atmosphere observatories or sites of amplification where the effects of the climate crisis on the atmosphere can be looked at in the detail and at the level of the critical zone, where the earth meets the sky.
Elise Hunchuck, Marco Ferrari and Jingru (Cyan) Cheng
