Climate breakdown disrupts life as we know it, not least the way we make and share space. For too long architecture has stood outside climate, seeing it as a problem to be fixed through technocratic intervention. Architecture as part of the modern constitution carries a dualistic view of the world: humans and non-humans, nature and technology, culture and science. Our lives and societies are structured around this attitude. But what if this polarity has never existed? What if architecture, entangled with climate, can become a radical practice that prioritises climate justice? To say that architecture is climate means that other possible architectures are also other possible climates.
Architecture is Climate explores these questions and propositions through a programme of residencies in the Lethaby Gallery by architecture research collective MOULD in collaboration with Soft Agency, Climate and Cities, Anthropocene Architecture School, and Civic Square. Architecture is Climate invites you to be part of an evolving programme of interventions and workshops that reimagine spatial practices by exploring potentials for positive change within cracks in the present.
As you enter the Lethaby Gallery, note how only a portion of the space is accessible. This partition reflects the fact that the world currently consumes resources accounting for 1.75 planets a year, when we only have 1. The inaccessible part of the gallery represents that overshoot, the part we should not use. The exhibition has been designed as a work in progress, using salvaged materials from previous exhibitions, to reflect the importance of working in processual and collaborative ways with pieces of the present.